


Fractures Emanating

by harcourt



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Captivity, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I wrote this for the kinkmeme, Kidnapping, Recovery, Rescue, Sensory Deprivation, Torture, Trauma, blindfolding, deaf!Clint, secret disability, temporary blinding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-23
Updated: 2013-08-04
Packaged: 2017-12-21 04:13:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 31,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/895672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harcourt/pseuds/harcourt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For <a href="http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/7293.html?thread=14704253#t14704253">this prompt</a>, where the team doesn't know that Clint is deaf until he's captured and deprived of his sight and hearing aids and,</p><p> </p><p>  <i>the rescue is made more difficult by the fact that he doesn't know who they are and keeps fighting. Even after the hood is cut off, he's still fighting because he still can't see or hear. </i></p><p> </p><p>In which Clint is hopefully not broken, and the aftermath of a traumatic rescue effects the whole team.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't a WIP, it's just editing in progress. Hopefully it won't take to long to get the whole thing up. 
> 
> Also, I've broken it up so you can skip the torture parts by skipping chapter 2. Beware there are still references and flashbacks to it throughout the rest of the fic.

"You know what there isn't enough of?" Tony says, face washed in the blue light of half a dozen monitors and a legion of glowing buttons, "Compliments on my genius." 

Nobody says anything in response. Tony goes on anyway, sounding more than a little absent.

"I mean, I know everybody knows and I know you guys are appreciative, but it would be nice to hear it once in a while, you know? I mean, I mention all the time how Steve's pancakes are amazing--"

"Thanks, Tony."

"No problem. You're a great breakfast chef. See? Isn't that conducive to team building and the general feel goods?" He's chewing on his lower lip, peering intently at what Steve thinks of as Monitor Three--middle, bottom row. "I like to feel good, too. Don't make jokes about that. I'm baring my heart here. You'll hurt my feelings." He punches buttons and Monitor Six--top row, upper left--turns to static, then clears and shows a floor plan. Tony punches another button and says "Voila." 

Monitor One, right of Monitor Three--Steve had an ordered system, before Tony started moving the screens around--blinks on, the image bleeding over onto the screen next to it. 

Bruce exhales. Thor says, "I give thanks for your gifts," in a whisper, and Steve has no idea if he's being sincere or just humoring Tony.

Tony's doesn't look away from the screen. His expression doesn't change. He says. "Yeah. Well. Me, too." and gets up to pour a drink.

\-----

Clint's been missing for _days_. It's not entirely clear when he'd been taken, because Clint had a tendency disappear on SHIELD business with little or no notice and it wasn't until Natasha came back alone from an op, triggering a round of "I thought he was with you," that they realized Clint was most likely in trouble.

"We would make terrible parents," Tony said, already tapping at his keyboard, starting his hack into every available information source and then some.

\-----

Tony's screens have too much glare. They make Steve's eyes water as he stares at the slightly grainy image. He wipes his hand over his face and blinks hard, and someone pats him on the shoulder and says, "Easy Cap."

It's Bruce, leaning over his shoulder, jaw set as he studies the image.

"How does he even get _into_ these messes?" Tony complains from across the room, and there's the sound of tools falling--a heavy, metal clatter. Natasha says something to him, soothing, and Tony stalks back and slams his tumbler down on the table, studying the other screens from beside Steve's shoulder. 

"Well. We found him. Now we have to _find_ him." Tony's breakdowns are dramatic, but brief. He's already working again.


	2. Chapter 2

The last thing Clint hears--almost literally--is his op leader shrieking in his ear. _Then_ he probably hears some of the explosion, but damn if he can remember it. He does remember the way slamming into the wall jars his head and the way he felt sick and scrambled before everything went dark and silent.

And stayed that way. 

His eyes are gooed up and he doesn't know if he should be worried about that. If that means he's more or less likely to be blind. He's not sure if he was close enough to the explosion for that to be a risk. He thinks he remembers being able to see after--someone checking his pulse, someone finding the knocked-loose end of his hearing aid--but it's blurry and fragmented and it might have been a nightmare.

God knows he's dreamed about _that_ often enough.

He's thinks he's concussed. Someone pulls him to his knees and he almost throws up when his balance shifts. He starts to say something. Something like, "Where am I?" or maybe "Who are you?" but he never gets it out before he gets slammed in the head again.

While he's still getting used to his new horizontal position, he's yanked up by his hair and this time he does vomit. Or at least tries to. He chokes and gags and his guts spasm, but nothing comes up. Maybe he drools down his chin a little. He can't really tell before he's thrown down and hauled up again and this time he thinks they get a cry out of him. It's somehow harder to hold it in when he can't hear himself.

There's more than one of them, which is par for the course for these sorts of things, but he can't tell _how_ many. Only that there's too many hands restraining him for him to even start to fight back. Someone is tugging at the collar of his shirt, and then there's the soft _ssshhhhrrrpp_ vibration of ripping fabric and the sudden chill of air on his skin and he realizes they're cutting him out of his clothes.

"No. No." He knows he says it. He probably screams it, but all it accomplishes is to get his head slammed back into the floor until he quiets. And because he needs his brains inside his skull to properly plan an escape, he lets them cut him out of his pants without argument. Even shifts obediently at the touch on his hip so they can pull the fabric free of his legs.

They pull him to his feet, where he sways unsteadily, and someone undoes his boots with slow care. Clint thinks _damn it_ because foot wear would really be helpful in getting out of here, but he lifts his feet out of them one at a time, and stands on the cold floor, buck naked except for his socks. 

Until they make him remove those, too. 

It takes him a while to understand what they want. He thinks they're yelling because he can feel the vibrations, an angry hum and murmur when they get loud, but it's not nearly enough to understand orders. By the time he figures it out, he's back on the floor, curled up against blows and saying, "Okay, okay. I'm doing it," as he peels his socks off and tosses them away.

He probably sounds pathetic.

They pull him back to his knees, and he goes along because he has literally nothing else on him to strip off, so what else could they possibly want him to do. 

And that's when Clint realizes they don't want anything. They beat him until he falls to his hands, then haul him up and do it again, until he can't stay up. Until he lies there and takes it, turning his face into the floor in a token effort to protect his head. That's when they take a break to give him some water.

He throws it up.

The floor hums. Laughter, he thinks, and is so angry he tries to get up. They kick him down, pull his head back and force more water into him, until he's spluttering and choking, and when they finish and he's lying soaked and fucking naked at their feet--and he knows it's at their feet, because they keep jabbing him with the steel toes of their boots--one of them coaxes him up to his hands and knees.

He knows it's a joke, because he can feel the hum of laughter through the floor again, but at least it gives him a minute where no one's hitting or kicking him, so he goes along with it. Takes the opportunity to breathe and stays quiet while he's patted on the head and they probably make obscene jokes, and doesn't balk until something is draped over his head and cinched at his throat. 

His response to _that_ is instant and reflexive, but not fast enough. The blow slams into his ribs so hard that he rolls several times before coming to a stop, winded and wheezing. He feels footsteps come closer and then there's the tap on the side of his jaw-- _up_ , he thinks of it as, and god they're fucking _training him_ \--and he struggles back to his knees and lets them fix the hood. Stays still when a heavy band tightens around his throat and--after some fussing at the back of his neck--he feels the smooth click of a well-oiled bolt sliding home.

They've locked him in. 

\-----

Steve is on what Tony's been calling 'Clint watch'. _Tony_ is on what Tony's been calling 'Clint watch', because Tony will not _leave_ , no matter whose turn it actually is.

"I didn't say there were turns," Tony says, "Clint-watch is my thing, so I get to make the rules." He has a second chair pulled up to the workstation, and stares into the screen with his brow furrowed. He's not working on anything just now, but his fingers move restlessly. Steve wonders if he's building something in his mind, or punching imaginary keys.

"Tony, you won't be any use if you're exhausted. I can get you if anything happens." Anything _different_ he means. There's an irregular pattern of people beating the hell out of Clint. Sometimes they leave him alone for hours and hours and sometimes the abuse seems unending. Right now, Clint's just kneeling hunched over, hands bound behind his back, but even in the grainy feed, Steve can see him swaying.

Tony snorts derisively. "He could _die_ while I'm sleeping. We can't leave him, we already," his hand flutters, vaguely indicating the screen, "I'm not sharing you guys with SHIELD anymore. I'm not. They don't take care of anything they borrow, and they borrow my stuff _all the time_."

On screen, Clint sways a bit further left then usual, then stops and almost decisively sways to the right. Stops. Goes left. Repeats the whole thing. And then again. And again.

"What the fuck is he doing?" Tony asks, sitting up. "Oh my god, they've hit him in the head one too many times. This? This is why I can't go to bed."

It's not a code. Clint's just on repeat, and Steve's seen some stuff in the war, but he doesn't mention it to Tony. "Go to bed, Tony. Please. I won't go anywhere. I'll stay right here."

If Clint is losing his mind, he doesn't want Tony to see.

\-----

_Fifteen one thousand_ , Clint thinks. The lock swings and then knocks against the left side of his neck as he comes to an abrupt stop. It hurts a bit. The weight pulls on the strap across his throat and it feels uncomfortably like being strangled, but only for a second. He goes right. _Sixteen one thousand_.

When he loses count, he stops until he can remember where he was. In the silence, in the dark, there's not much else he can do to pass the time, to _keep_ the time. _Man's gotta have a hobby_ , Clint thinks.

_Eighteen one thousand_.

\-----

To be honest, no one is really sleeping, except maybe Natasha, who is a finely honed mission _machine_. Who goes about resting with the same cold determination that she goes about checking her mission gear. The only crack in her calm is when she gets on the phone to chew out SHIELD and maybe Fury and demand information.

The rest of them make a show of it, dutifully disappearing into their rooms, but they wander back into the lab every so often under various pretenses, to stare at the monitors until Steve shoos them out again.

Unmovable Tony's finally collapsed, slumped with his cheek on a pile of screws, napkins, and peanuts and computer parts Steve can't identify and Steve gets up to stretch, unofficially switching out with Bruce who slides into the vacated chair as soon as he steps away. "How's he doing?" he asks, as if Steve could diagnose anything beyond _alive_.

Steve flinches as someone else comes onto the screen, getting Clint up from where he'd been curled on the floor. He glances at Bruce, worried a bit in case the _other guy_ should make an appearance and smash days worth of Tony's work and their only lead to bits. But Bruce hasn't turned green, or shown any sign of changing. His mouth is set in a grim line as he watches.

"Alright," he says, on a shaky exhale, when they remove the hood over Clint's head, and they can get a slightly better estimation of Clint's condition. 

It's not good. Clint seems drunk, casting about uncertainly. His arms are free again, and he raises a hand to rub his eyes, but never gets there. They hit him when he tries again, and every time he lifts a hand from the floor until he catches on and stops.

"Clint," Bruce says, "Shh. Just be still," like Clint can hear him. 

\-----

"Oh, for god's sake," Tony says, like he's unbelievably exasperated. His face is indented with the shapes of the junk he's slept on. He scrubs at his cheek with one hand.

"Don't, Clint," Bruce says softly, but _of course_ when they try to push food into Clint's mouth he bites them, the same as he had the last time. Steve's glad he still has fight in him, but it's not going to last long if he's starved and keeps antagonizing them.

"You are making it very hard for me to save you," Tony tells the screen, leaning close to it, "Your stupidity is giving my brilliance a good run for its money, and that's saying something, Barton."

Clint stretches his neck, opens his mouth like he's going to take the food. He even lets his tongue slide out a little, looking almost obscene. And when the food touches his mouth, he reaches a little further and _chomps_. Grins huge and feral, blood running down his chin as the man recoils, clutching at his hand the moment he can tear free of Clint's teeth. 

Clint spits something to the side and shows teeth. Steve is pretty sure he's laughing.

\-----

There's a spark of light, and then a burn that makes him cry out-- _just surprised_ , he tells himself, but when it comes again and again, he feels him lips moving and knows he's saying, "Stop, stop."

He can't hear it, so it's not like he's _really_ begging.

He gets the tap that means _up_ , but his head is too heavy for him to lift, much less the rest of his body. Someone carefully gets their hand under his cheek, where it's pressed to the floor, and cradles it. Clint lets them. Feels a sound come out of him when they slide the hood back on, escaping on his breath without his consent.

They make him snap the lock shut himself, guiding his hands to it with mock gentleness, giving him time when he can't get his fingers to cooperate. Letting him rest and try again until he gets it.

There's laughter, but Clint doesn't care as long as they let him put his head back down on the floor and lie still.

\-----

Clint breaks about a hundred times, and pulls himself back together to do something pissy and stupid, that inevitably ends with him slumped on the floor, or playing to some sick game. Even Tony has nothing to say, shaking his head in silence as Clint obediently, shakily, gets back to his knees so they can beat him down again. There's no sound on the feed, but they can read laughter in the poses of the people who wander into the camera's view when Clint hits the ground, and without being told, starts to haul himself back up.

Someone--a grainy man-shaped shadow, only half in the light--pats Clint, like it's a job well done, then holds him steady so someone else can belt him in the head, hard enough that Clint flails drunkenly against the floor, unable to get enough balance to even get back to hands and knees.

"I'll kill them," Tony says, flat and cold and with no scrap of his usual bantering tone, "I'll kill every last one of them."

Steve glances at him, then goes back to the staring into the screen. "Yeah," he says.

\-----

They've been baiting Clint for the last hour, and Clint, because he's Clint, had to rise to it. Kicking and lashing out and hitting almost no one until twenty seconds ago, when a lucky sweep had taken out someone's legs. 

They haven't paid him back for it yet, and the time it's taking them to come up with ideas is scaring the crap out of Steve.

\-----

_Two thousand thirty elephant_ , Clint thinks, because the _one thousand_ spacer was throwing him off now that he'd hit the higher numbers. He's lost count enough times that he has no idea if his count is right or not. He's broken his own rules and taken a couple of guesses when he couldn't remember where he was, he didn't want to start over now that he was in the thousands.

No one would know he was cheating anyway.

\-----

"They should hit him," Tony says, and Natasha looks at him in irritated shock

"Not hard, I mean. Just, you know." He gestures at the screen, where Clint is back to swaying left, then right, then left. "Because I don't know what this is, but it's disturbing as hell."

They haven't touched Clint in hours, but Clint hasn't slept or even lain down. Which would be the first order in the Natasha-rules-of-I-have-a-moment's-peace-in-hard-times, and Steve is pretty sure Clint subscribes to that rule book.

He's hopes it doesn't mean Clint's not all there anymore or too scrambled to try to hang on.

\-----

"Three thousand four hundred nineteen," Clint whispers, or thinks he does. Somewhere between two thousand five hundred elephant and now, he's slipped to the floor, and they've let him. Maybe they're done.

Maybe they're gone. 

Clint has no idea how much time has passed. He's hungry and thirsty and cold, but he's been that way for so long that he can't judge time by it. He makes a soft sound, then remembers and says, "Elephant. Damn it." He keeps forgetting the fucking elephant part when the number takes a while to recall.

"Three thousand four-four," he has to stop. He thinks something moves--a low thrum in the floor, against his face--and he really doesn't want to get up, but nothing comes of it, "Three thousand four hundred ... twenty," he finishes with quiet triumph, "Elephant."

\-----

Something pings and Tony jumps up so fast he knocks his chair over and hits Thor with the wheels as it goes end-up.

"A lock! We have a lock!" he shouts, right into Bruce's face, and goes slamming keys and yelling at JARVIS. "WE have a--a--coordinates!"

Natasha disappears silently and re-appears minutes later suited up. Her face is hard, but a slight smile plays at the corner of her mouth.

Steve looks at her and thinks, _someone's going to be very very sorry_.

\-----

He can't really breathe in the hood. It's hot and when he pants too hard it seals against his mouth. The strap securing the hood is tight enough around his throat that the combination sends him into panic until the light headedness slows him down and the hood falls away again.

They have a new game, which is to shock him. And it _sucks_ because he can't sense it coming--no vibration of feet on the floor, or movement of air against his skin. 

Plenty of laughter after, though, while he tries and tries to breathe and gets only the hood filling his mouth.

\-----

"Bruce?" Tony says, strapping in, flipping switches, "You angry? You need a pep talk? I can make fun of...I don't know. What are you insecure about?"

"Tony."

"Oh, I didn't mean _now_. Later. When we're close. I have to fly this thing, you know. I can't do that if you're all smashy and--well _I can_ , but it would be a bit more challenging."

"If it is necessary," Thor promises gravely, clicking his seat belt, "I will mock the Hulk."

Tony pauses to consider, then asks, "Are you sure? No offense, but I don't think you have my finesse."

"Tony," Steve says again, even though Tony already has them lifting off, flipping switches and punching buttons as he talks.

Bruce says, quietly, "Don't worry, Tony. I'm plenty mad."


	3. Chapter 3

True to his word, Bruce _is_ plenty mad. He charges down the lowered hatch and is huge and green before his feet even touch earth. Hulk whuffs, sniffing the air, and roars. 

"Still not sure how to steer him, actually." Tony says, like Hulk is one of his robots. He flips down his face plate, and his voice goes a little sharp around the edges. A little _computery_ as Steve thinks of it. "JARVIS? Note to self--" 

Natasha give him a shove and Tony says, "Okay, okay," and then the suit powers up and he shoots out the back of the plane, to hover in place just out of Hulk's reach, hands and feet glowing. Thor thunders after.

"We'll get him," Steve says to Natasha, whose game face slips for just a second before it's gone and she's pleasant and calm-- _professional_ \--again. "He'll be okay."

"Oh he had _better_ be okay," Natasha says, but it's not clear who the threat is intended for. SHIELD or Fury, or the denizens of the warehouse Hulk is endeavoring to tear apart, stone by stone.

"There is a _door_ ," Tony is saying in his _please try to keep up with this logic_ voice as they catch up. Hulk pulls a fire escape down and mangles it before tossing it aside, and Steve can _hear_ Tony rolling his eyes as he says, "Well. You'll figure it out."

Between the two of them, Tony and Thor rip the large door--truck size, for loading and off loading--off its hinges and Tony turns from it to bow politely to Natasha, "Ladies firs--Or not."

The Hulk is already disappearing into the gloomy interior of the building, and Natasha slips in after him, all silence and shadows. Not that it's much of a stealth operation with Hulk smashing and roaring his way through the place. With Thor hot on their heels, yelling, "Hawkeye? Are you there?" and knocking windows and partitions out with his hammer.

Tony says, "Better make sure we're there to rescue Hawkeye from his rescuers," and zips after them, leaving Steve to bring up the rear.

\-----

There's a shudder, deeper and coming from all around him. Like the whole building is vibrating. Or laughing. Clint snaps out a, "Fuck you," just in case, and grits his teeth against what might be coming. 

Nothing happens. 

There's a shudder, then another and another, getting closer. Clint tries to get up, and can't. Feels around for something he can grab onto for support, but knows there's nothing. He's tried before. The room feels even huger, all of a sudden, the darkness deeper.

"What--" he tries, "What are you going to do?" He hopes it sounds like a challenge, but it's probably more like a whine. His heart pounds, hard enough that it feels like it's choking him, but he can't do anything but wait.

Nothing comes. No blow, no shock, no burn. He shivers.

Another tremor shivers through the floor, and Clint manages to scoot himself across the concrete a little way, dragging himself on his belly until he needs to stop to rest, then drags himself a little more, even though it's taking the skin off his elbows and knees.

No one drags him back.

\-----

Hulk, maybe inspired by Tony and Thor, rips off every door he encounters and tosses them over his shoulder, leaving anyone behind him to dodge as best they can. Tony's given up trying to direct him, but there's no need. As soon as they encounter resistance, Hulk has one objective and that is to smash or trample _everyone_ who isn't an Avenger.

Steve thinks, distantly, that he should try to stop him, but he makes no move to. 

Natasha is _gone_ , disappeared into the depth of the place and mysteriously taking Thor with her, even though Steve wouldn't have thought Thor capable of her flavor of vanishing trick. He touches his comm, even though he doesn't need to--it's still weird not having to push a button or _anything_ \--and says, "Widow?"

There's a long time with no reply. Natasha is killing people and because Natasha also follows orders, she's going to simply be unavailable to receive any command to stop.

"Any sign?" Steve asks anyway, and gets a short,

"No," and then silence.

"Thor?" he tries.

"You are breaking up," Thor says, after a moment, loud and crystal clear. Something crackles near the comm, belatedly. "I cannot hear you." Then there's a loud slam and Natasha spits something hateful in Russian, and Steve decides to leave them alone. 

\-----

Thor hammers his way through an office wall, then a double door, and comes to an abrupt halt in a large store room. It's dim, lit only by filthy skylights, and the concrete floor is cracked and uneven. The air is damp. Thor is still for a long time--by Thor standards--then says, "By the all-father," and Natasha shoots twice, taking out the last of the resistance, and comes to peer over his shoulder.

"Cap? Tony?"

" _Iron man_ ," Tony says, sounding annoyed even though everyone _knows_ he's Iron Man.

"We've got him."

\-----

Steve gets there at about the same time as Hulk, and has to turn around quickly to block his path, suddenly realizing there's a chance Hulk won't recognize Clint. He spins on his heel ands braces for impact, yelling, "Hulk, wait. No more smash--" and ends up tossed the rest of the way out of the hall and into the warehouse storeroom to slide to a stop against the backs of Thor's legs. 

He scrambles up. He can't let Hulk--

But there's only Bruce Banner, half dressed and looking slightly disoriented. "What the hell?" Bruce says, as if it's Steve's fault he's de-Hulked, "What happened? I usually wake up in a pit or something." Then, his eyes focus past Steve and Thor and he says, "Oh. Oh god."

Clint's halfway across the warehouse, out of range of the camera Tony's hacking had commandeered, curled on his side with one arm thrown over his head for protection. There's bits of debris scattered around, strewn across the floor and over Clint, probably rattled loose from the aging roof by Hulk's rampage.

Natasha's crouched by him, her brow drawn together in as much worry as Natasha ever lets her mission face show. She's just sitting there, crouched with her weight on her heels, elbows on her thighs and her hands hanging still between her knees. Her whole body still. Steve's gut clenches.

"Nat?" Only Clint calls her that, usually, but it seems alright to use it, considering the circumstances. Steve takes a step closer, then stops and swallows hard before he can go on. "Is he?"

"He's alive," she says calmly, her eyes on Clint.

To his left Tony, no longer hovering and with his face plate lifted, starts to walk over, the metal feet of his armor loud on the concrete, echoing in the cavernous space. He starts to say something, but never gets a word out because Clint is suddenly struggling to get up, head bobbing in a strange, disoriented way.

Bruce says, "Clint? Clint, you have to stay still. You've hit your head."

Clint makes it to his knees, then gets a foot under himself. The sort of crouch he could launch himself from if he was in any shape at all. His breathing is hard, something between a wheeze and a choked whimper. He sounds like a sick, cornered animal and Steve's blood goes a bit cold at the sound.

"Clint," he tries, firm and gentle.

"That hasn't been working," Natasha says. She still hasn't moved except to put a hand out to stop Tony, because every clanging footstep is making Clint worse. Then, when Bruce stalks up, "Don't touch him. He tried to kneecap Thor."

Steve can't quite imagine _how_ Clint would have attempted that, nude, unarmed, blinded and barely holding himself up, even fueled with adrenaline, but he believes it. Bruce just frowns.

"We have to get that _thing_ off his head," Bruce says, as Clint's wheeze stutters and he tears at the hood in panic, then loses his balance and topples over, landing hard on his rear. He scrambles backwards away from them, still struggling with the hood. "Before he suffocates."

Clint collapses, both hands tugging at the strap around his throat. A noise comes out of him, a kind of long whimper, broken by gasps for breath. Natasha says, "Alright. Be careful."

\-----

There a touch at his neck and Clint catches his breath. It's not quite the tap he's used to, but he starts to get up to his knees, breath hitching even as he hates himself for it, for giving them that tell. He doesn't know what this new game is. Can't get a bead on what they want from him, what participation they're going to demand.

_Analyze the situation, Hawkeye_ , he tells himself, but his head is pounding and feels like it's full of something thick and muffling, and he can't seem to keep his thoughts in order

He doesn't make it up, but not by his own failure this time. There's a hand on his shoulder, keeping him down, he can feel the soft hum of a voice. 

_Yeah, it's fucking hilarious_ , Clint thinks, and hopes to hell he doesn't throw up in the hood. Wills himself to be calm, to not give them any more entertainment. But when the strap holding the hood is tugged, he lashes out, twisting around so he can punch where he thinks the guy is. It's a glancing blow at best, but it gives him some bearings and the next hit is square.

\-----

Steve mutters "Sorry," to Bruce and gets a better grip on Clint's shoulder. Clint's weak, but he's _slippery_ , twisting away when he tries to make a lunge.

"Clint. Clint. Easy," Bruce says, rubbing his face where Clint's punch had landed. After his earlier efforts, Clint doesn't have the strength anymore to really hurt him, but he's more than capable of hurting _himself_ , considering the damage he's already taken. "Hey, we got you. Come on. We're going to get the hood off, okay? Hold still."

Clint seems to go along with it, until Bruce gets close again, then won't let him anywhere near the closure of the thing. The slightest touch makes him thrash and fight and when he twists out from under Steve's hand and starts to get up again, Steve finally sighs and shifts around behind him, slides closer and wraps Clint in his arms so he can't fight.

"No," Clint says, strangely loud, then much quieter, "No. No, don't. I--okay?" He shifts against Steve, and Steve can feel the heat radiating off him. He pants and stops, then jerks and struggles before going quiet and Steve realizes he can't breathe.

"Bruce!"

Bruce makes a face and steps close quickly, hands efficient and careful, murmuring, "Not going to hurt you, Clint. It's okay," but Clint makes a choked whining sound anyway when he tugs the strap around. 

"I can't get this lock off here," Bruce says, "Steve, hold him steady. I'm going to cut the--this _thing_ off him." He has one of Natasha's knives.

Steve hates himself a bit as he pulls Clint's head firmly against his chest and Clint cries out, because god, the blows he'd taken to the head. Of course. Steve says, "Easy, easy," but doesn't loosen his grip. Clint gasps once, twice, again and Steve recognizes the shudder of sobs. "Clint. God, Clint, it's okay. Natasha?"

She's been talking to him the whole time, in a low voice that Clint hasn't paid anymore mind to than he has Steve or Bruce, but she doesn't touch him. She just meets Steve's eyes with a dark look before repeating Clint's name. A little louder, and in what's almost a pleading tone, but Clint doesn't reach to her either.

Bruce eases the hood off Clint's face, and Clint take a deep, shuddering breath. Bares his teeth in a fierce snarl, despite his hitching breath and his shivers. "Don't," he says, "Try it and I'll take another finger."

Natasha smiles, and Steve does, too. A Clint who's issuing threats is a Clint is who's still there, still sane, no matter how strange the rest of his reactions are. 

Tony says, "Hawkeye, it's us. Come on," and stops. Speechless in a way Tony never is. "Aw, geez, Clint," he says then, and it's low, quiet. Tony's face has gone soft, his usual sardonic smile completely gone. 

"What?" Steve says because with Clint pulled against him, he can't see what Tony's looking at. "Is he alright?"

Bruce shakes his head. "They glued his eyes shut," he says, his tone so even that Steve knows he's getting a handle on the rage, keeping the Hulk in check. Clint doesn't react. He does try to smack his head into Steve's face when his hold loosens a bit, but there's no sign he even hears them talking, much less recognizes their voices.

"Clint?" Bruce asks, and Clint turns, but only after Bruce touches his arm. His head turns this way and that uncertainly, as if searching, and Bruce takes a deep breath. Carefully reaches a hand out and snaps his fingers next to Clint's head, twice on either side.

There's no reaction.

"He can't hear us," Bruce says and sits back, "He has no idea it's us."

\-----

They wrap him in Thor's cape, because the warehouse is _cold_ and Clint's shivering with it and with exhaustion and with fever. And also, Steve admits, to restrain him. He's still when the fabric first touches him, head tilted warily but too worn out to protest. Steve doesn't think he's aware of the distressed noises he makes when Natasha tucks his arms into the cape. She tries to soothe him by gently brushing his cheek with the back of her fingers, but he tosses his head a little, and she gets up and says, "Let's just get him out of here."

It's still easier said than done, because as pliant as Clint's been the last few minutes, he _loses it_ when Thor pulls the cape snug around him, trapping his arms, restricting his movement. Steve has to catch him up again and pin him against his own body, because Clint's thrashing in blind panic and the last thing he needs is to hit his head again.

"You're okay. You're okay," he soothes, even though Clint can't hear him. 

Clint says, "No. No, please. Don't do this," then makes a choking noise and tries to squirm free. Steve doesn't let him. "I can't," Clint pants, desperate, "I _can't_ ," and then he's just babbling incoherent pleas as Thor gathers him up, as careful as Steve's ever seen him.

He tucks Clint's head against his shoulder, and murmurs to him softly in Asgardian as if comforting a child. Clint tries to elbow him through the cape, but whether it's intentional or just a result of his struggling, Steve can't tell.

Bruce says, reluctantly, "There's a sedative on the jet. It'll be harder to monitor him," and Steve knows he's thinking of how scrambled Clint had looked on the video feed, at times, and worrying about concussion, "but at this point, I think it's worth the risk."

\-----

It's a relief when the hood is gone, when he can finally take a proper breath, but then they arrange his limbs close to his body and he can't get them loose and panic slams through him. The thought of the silence and the dark and _not being able to move oh god_ is so terrifying he can barely breathe around it.

He hadn't thought there was more they could take away.

There's movement, a large hand keeping his head still, and then he's being moved. There's the rumble of a voice--he can feel it through where his cheek is pressed to the guy's chest, but it's too steady for laugher. The rise and fall of it is almost conversational.

Then, what feels like a long time later, the restraint is loosened and there's a sharp prick at his arm. He's still too tangled up to get at them, but he _tries_ , then stops when there's no follow-up. Nothing worse than that small jab.

For a second, he's confused, and then a warm slackness takes over his limbs and dulls the edges of _everything_ and he groans and says, "Oh, hell. Just kill me already."

\-----

They don't dare give Clint a full dose, but what Bruce is willing to risk is enough. Clint relaxes, finally. He mutters softly as the sedative hits, and then his breathing evens out, and even though he shivers hard when Tony starts the engines, the fight is out of him.

Natasha has him lying across a row of seats, head on her thigh. His face is bruised and filthy, streaked thickly with dried blood, his hair a matted mess, and god, his eyes. There's some kind of dried goo keeping his eyelids shut, crusted thickly over his lashes. Steve watches as Bruce experimentally tries to wipe it away, but Clint won't have it, twitching away even under the influence of the drugs.

"Alright," Bruce says, "It's alright. I won't then, okay?" 

There's silence for a while. Nothing but the sound of the jet engines. Even Tony is quiet, other than the occasional, "Doing okay?" 

Eventually, Clint snakes a hand free of the cape and Natasha puts her own hand out to stop him in case he's rallying to fight, but doesn't touch him. Just leaves her hand hovering in the air between his wrist and Bruce's face. Clint reaches instead for the strap still around his throat and tugs at it, fusses with the frayed edge where Bruce had sliced through it.

Steve, leaning over the back of the row of seats, says, "Hang on, Clint. I can get that if you stay still." 

Clint's too exhausted and doped up to resist, but he does moan a protest when Steve tugs at the lock, shifting the strap so he can reach better. "Ready?" he asks, and snaps the bolt as carefully as he can. It's a heavy enough lock that it's not easy. Not when he has to be careful of jostling Clint, but the metal strains and then gives way in his hands.

Clint jerks in alarm, but the whole thing comes apart after that, and the strap slides loose under his fingers, into his hands. Clint tears it off, and clumsily throws it and it flutters to the floor. Steve presses the pieces of the lock into his hand, and he throws those too, sending them thunking against the bulkhead, then falls back into Thor's cape, his hand curled protectively against his bared throat. When Natasha strokes his cheek again, he lets her.

Tony says. "What the hell is going on back there? Are you guys _throwing stuff_? Thor, go supervise the kids. Tell them uncle Tony will be very upset if they break his fancy toys."

\-----

They take Clint back to the tower, because Natasha _will be damned_ if they take him to SHIELD, when he can't even recognize _them_. 

"You can send personnel _here_ ," she tells Fury, stalking all over the floor and back again, her professional cool giving way to rage and restless agitation. She tells him, "We have _Banner_ ," and "I don't care, he'll do," and hangs up on him.

Bruce comes out of Clint's room--Or not so much _Clint's_ room, but the room off the lab with the medical equipment that had always made Steve worry about what sort of experiments Bruce and Tony got up to, exactly, if they were expecting that kind of aftermath--and intentionally leaves the door open. They're all sitting out in the lab, like it's a hospital waiting room. Despite everything, it seemed wrong to sit in while Bruce examined Clint.

Natasha stalks back to them and says, "Well?"

Bruce gives one of his awkward shrugs. "His ears are clear. He just. He can't hear."

"He's _deaf_?" Tony sounds both incredulous and pissed as hell. Natasha sighs and gets her phone back out.

"Director?" 

Anyone else, Steve thought, would have sounded at least a bit sheepish. Or at least apologetic.

\-----

Clint scrubs at his eyes, and someone takes his wrist and pulls his hand away again. He says, "Please," because the longer the gentle act goes on, the more it's getting to him. There's a touch by his ear then, and he flinches away, heart racing, shaking his head.

"Okay, okay. It's--just--just don't okay?" He wants to scrub at his eyes, but he keeps his hands away. Fists them in the blanket instead. 

\-----

"Alright, Clint." Bruce sighs, setting the hearing aid back in its box and considering Clint with a steady, sad look. "We'll try again in a bit."

Tony. who had given up on Clint's privacy--"My lab, my rules."--and had barged in to sit on the desk and watch Bruce fumble, says "Jesus, Clint, you have no idea how _thrilled_ I am that they didn't _do this to you_ , but a pre-existing medical condition? You and I and our four closest assigned-by-Fury friends are going to have to sit down and have a talk about communication. And relationships. And how those things go together."

Clint's not responding to them, exactly, but he _is_ reacting to voices, if there's enough volume, and he shifts uneasily until Bruce says, "Tony," in warning and Tony stops.

\-----

Natasha, after a short and somewhat more polite conversation with Fury, had marched into Clint's room and torn through his things until she'd found the box containing the hearing aids. Had handed them to Bruce with a furious, tight look on her face. Clint was going to have hell to pay, as soon as he was well enough.

Probably wouldn't hear the end of it for a long while, if ever.

\-----

The worst part is, Clint won't tolerate _anything_. Fights the IV, fights water, fights food. Fights Bruce trying to get a look at his eyes, flinching and shaking when he shines a pen light on them to get a better look.  
"I'm not getting near his eyes if he doesn't want me to," Bruce says, setting the light aside. The hearing aids are still on the side table. Steve looks at them and then at Clint, and says,

"We're not going to hold him down again."

Bruce shakes his head quickly, "God, no. I hope it doesn't come to that. I don't think he could, again."

Clint is _out_ , his anger and terror giving out in the face of exhaustion, but he wakes at the slightest touch, so Bruce and Steve keep watch from across the room, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest. Flinching when he scrabbles for purchase in the blankets and they don't dare wake him in case that's worse.

\-----

Tony comes back with a strangely docile Thor and with coffee. Says, "So, SHIELD sent someone, but I think Natasha's killing them."

Which Bruce thinks is his way of asking if they need the assistance. He says, "I think we're okay for now." He's not entirely sure of that, but Clint seems stable and scaring the crap out him some more seems less than constructive. "If he takes a turn, we'll call it in."

"Okay," Tony says, and makes no move to call Natasha off.

Clint shifts and sighs, maybe sensing the room filling up, and after a bit starts to lift his head, only to groan and let it fall back to the pillow. The worst of his cuts are bandaged--even stitched, a couple of them--but his hair is still filthy, standing up in disgusting spikes because he won't let anyone close long enough to clean him up.

He takes a deep breath and says, "Do I smell coffee? Now that's a _real_ asshole move." Clint talks to himself, off and on. Muttered rambling, the odd nonsequitor, fragments of thoughts that Bruce thinks he doesn't know he's saying out loud.

Tony says, "You bet you do. The _best_ coffee. The coffee you make fun of, let me add." He pulls a chair up and Clint starts at the vibration when it scrapes across the floor. "Well, the coffee _machine_ you make fun of, anyway."

Clint's hands are on the edge of the blanket. His mouth pulls in a strange expression Bruce can't read, and then he carefully reaches to feel the pillow under his head. His breath accelerates, but it's not the same panic from earlier.

"Cozy, right?" Tony says, and sips his coffee. Clint swallows hard. Makes a soft, scared noise in the back of his throat, and starts to scramble up. Tony stops him, then nearly spills coffee over them both when it turns into an awkward struggle, Tony trying to balance his mug in one hand and keep Clint from falling out of bed with the other.

Thor starts to step in just as Clint ducks and somehow slides under Tony's arm, to pitch against him, falling against his chest with a soft groan. 

Bruce and Steve are on their feet as Tony says, "Clint? Damn it--" just as Clint grabs at his T-shirt and says,

"Oh god. Oh god." 

To his credit, Tony stands absolutely still as Clint clings to his shirt with one hand and presses the other to his chest, feeling the edges of the arc reactor with shaking fingers. "It's not," Clint says, shaking his head even though he won't let go either. "It's not. It isn't."

Tony puts the coffee down--miraculously unspilled--and carefully detaches Clint's hand from his shirt, leaving the other pressed to the arc reactor. Clint takes a shaky breath and swallows twice. Hard. "Tony?" He tries, sounding terrified to ask

Tony takes his hand and puts it to his face so Clint can feel him nod.


	4. Chapter 4

"How do you even turn these on?" Tony asks, fiddling with one of the hearing aids, peering critically at it as he turns it about in his fingers. He finds the switch with an "Aha!" then holds it up to announce, "This? Is ineffective design."  
Natasha swats him and takes it away. She's sitting on the edge of Clint's bed, turned to face him, one leg folded and her ankle tucked under the opposite knee. It's not a position she can move very quickly from, but she probably thinks Clint's not as likely to make a try at murder now that he knows who they are. She pats Clint on the arm, not bothering with words he won't hear anyway, then takes his hand and drops the device into it. 

Clint turns it about his fingertips, clumsily feeling the shape before recognition flickers across his face and he holds it back out to her with a short nod. Natasha takes it then leans over and slides it into his ear, frowning slightly when she has to turn it a little to get the fit right and it makes Clint twitch away, then groan when the sudden movement jostles his head. It's probably that more than anything that makes him hold still enough for her to adjust it properly, but the next one is a bit harder, because she has to reach _over_ Clint, and he goes absolutely still at the proximity. "Easy," she says and Clint makes a noise that's somewhere between a laugh and a choked-off sob, like hearing her voice is an almost physical shock. 

"Nat?" His voice is softer now that he can hear it. Tentative and pitched low, like he's afraid it'll be overheard. 

"Mmhmm." Natasha finishes putting the second hearing aid in and sits back. "Tony's here, too."

Tony says, "Hey, Clint," so Clint can confirm and get a bead on his location and Natasha gives Clint a second to process it before asking,

"How is it? Can you hear alright?"

Clint nods shakily. Manages a, "Yeah." 

Then he throws up all over the sheets.

\-----

Dealing with Clint's gunked shut eyes has to wait a bit longer, because careful dabbing makes no difference, and tugging the stuff free will probably take Clint's eyelashes off with it. Steve's not too comfortable with trying anything more than that, especially when most of _Clint's_ moves to scrub the goo away are abortive or short lived. 

"It's just me," Steve says, when Clint drifts restlessly awake again. He's been carefully working through the grime crusted on Clint's face with a damp washcloth, wringing it out in a basin over and over, while Clint fades in and out, recognizing him and dropping off, then jerking awake in alarm. He has his hand at his throat again, where the strap had left bruises and scraped his skin raw, and Steve's not sure if he should try to move it away or not.

He considers the combination of cuts and grime and finally he takes Clint's wrist, but doesn't pull. Says, "Let me get your neck, okay?" and when Clint makes a soft noise, adds, "It's Steve," just in case, because Clint's recognition is in about the same state as his awareness, hazy and unreliable.

Clint gives in reluctantly, then catches his breath when the washcloth touches him. Pulls his wrist free with a panicked jerk and grabs clumsily for Steve's hand away to pull it away. Steve stops.

"Too cold?" he asks, to give Clint an out, that he doesn't take. There's not even the sarcastic snort of laughter he can summon for Tony. He shakes his head a little, and starts to let go of Steve, then doesn't. "Clint?"

"Sorry." Clint finally lets go, uncurling his fingers like it hurts him to do it, letting his hand drop back to the sheets. His jaw tenses unhappily. "Just. Do you think--Could you keep talking while you do it?" 

Steve takes the washcloth away to rinse it out again, pulling the sidetable closer, then stopping when Clint starts at the sound of it dragging over the floor. "Sure. I can do that." The scrape of the washcloth over the scruff of Clint's jaw is a bit strange, but Clint sighs when Steve scrubs a little harder to get the filth off, then flops a hand at him, reaching and missing. Steve recognizes it as a prompt.

"I'm thinking," Steve tells him, easing up as he works his way closer to Clint's throat again. "How about you talk to me for a bit?"

Clint makes an _mm_ sound and doesn't, and Steve stops to consider. Tony would probably know what to say to fill up space, but Steve rinses the washcloth again and settles on humming, a little off key.

\-----

Clint doesn't really look any better after Steve's efforts. Might even look worse, the cuts and deep bruising no longer obscured by filth. His hair--too great a task for a washcloth and Clint's understandably limited tolerance--seems even more disgusting now that the rest of him is somewhat clean, and the glue sealing his eyes an obscene crust. Bruce feels a bit bad subjecting Clint to a stranger when he's still so jumpy and sick and _blind_ , but SHIELD has medical specialists--eye specialists, even--and Bruce doesn't want to take chances with chemicals near Clint's eyes, doesn't want to put his vision at any greater risk.

"So SHIELD optometry is a thing, huh?" Clint asks, being a pain. He's managing to sit up, legs off the side of the bed, shaky enough that he has to lean sideways against the headboard, but stubbornly refusing to lie down while facing the hazard of medical personnel. Bruce keeps wanting to catch him when he shifts his weight and slides a little. He's clearly fading.

The doctor SHIELD sends is young. Fresh-faced and visibly shocked at Clint's condition. At the nature of the problem she's supposed to fix. Clint doesn't help, fidgeting under her hands when she tries to get a better angle, jerking away from her when she shines a light on his eyelids. She considers Clint's question with a frown, clearly unsure if it's meant in earnest or if Clint is just giving her a hard time for the hell of it. He has a reputation with medical.

"Clearly," she says after a moment, in a tone cold enough it would make Natasha proud. "Clearly, it's _a thing_." She's probably new--and brilliant, the way SHIELD likes its recruits--and not entirely prepared to deal with Clint's attitude. Bruce feels for her.

Clint twitches again when she touches his face with a wet swab and hisses, and she says, "Hold still," at the same time that Clint snarls raspily, "Bit of warning?"

She takes a breath and her expression evens out into one of tried but determined patience. Rallying her professionalism, and Bruce can't really blame her, because Clint is in prime form, covering his strained nerves by being sarcastic and snappish.

"Please hold still," the doctor says evenly, mechanical as a recorded message, and tries again. Clint jumps, and opens his mouth, then shuts it. Bruce gives him a sharp look.

Something's just happened, and both Bruce and the doctor notice. She leans away from Clint, giving him space, while Bruce does the opposite, getting an arm around Clint in case he topples and says, "Clint?"

Clint takes a few deep breaths, and then whatever it is is over. He pushes Bruce back, saying, "Nothing. It's nothing. It's fine. Go ahead," but stays quiet for the remainder.

\-----

Whatever she's putting on his eyes is cold, and Clint can feel his lids loosening, feel more give when he reflexively tries to open them. 

And then the stuff _burns_ and he has a flash of memory, indistinct but intense. Just the sense of burning in his eyes and _panic_. He barely has time to take a breath, and it's gone. Replaced by Bruce's worried questioning and a hand at his back.

His eyes itch.

\-----

" _Shower_?" Tony says, sounding offended. "This is Stark Tower--okay. _Was_ Stark Tower. But my point still stands. I have a _jacuzzi_. Cup holders and everything." He pauses. "Well, no. That's a lie. Cup holders are tacky. I do have a robot butler, though."

The lights are turned low--Clint's eyes can't take the brightness yet--but Steve can easily make out the tired set of his jaw, the pain lines around his eyes. Clint still has the coordination of a drunk man, having to concentrate to put one foot in front of the other, and hating it. His attempt to bear his own weight is token at best, and for the most part he's letting Steve support him as they make their painful way to the bathroom. 

It would be faster if Steve thought Clint would tolerate being carried. He'd almost give it a shot if Clint wasn't so hell-bent on getting there under his own steam, even if only partially. Or hell-bent on _pretending_ to get there under his own steam, Steve amends, watching Clint try not to wince with every step.

Clint says, "The shower's fine, Tony." He sounds exhausted.

Steve sets Clint down on the toilet lid when they get there, hand at his shoulder to steady him so Clint can struggle awkwardly out of his clothes. His unbalanced wobbling would be almost comical if every movement wasn't also obviously painful. 

Clint hesitates for a moment, then slides out his hearing aids and hands them to Tony. Tony's offended look deepens. 

He says, "What? These aren't even _waterproof_?" like it's a personal affront.

"I can't hear you," Clint rasps, not even looking at Tony as he struggles to get his shirt off. It's Steve's, the larger size easier to wrangle onto Clint when they didn't want to move him too much. Now, the extra fabric just tangles around his limbs. Gets caught under his elbows. Clint can't get his arms high enough to pull it over his head.

"I'm going to build you new toys, Clint," Tony yells him, "Yours are sad and of sub-standard workmanship and--Do you need a hand with that?"

Clint makes a frustrated sound and Steve moves quickly to help, dropping his supporting hand to Clint's back before tugging the shirt up. Clint's skin is too hot still, and he shivers as the shirt comes off. Shivers harder when for a second it gets snagged around his head. 

Steve yanks it off him and tosses it out into the hall. Says, "Easy, Clint. Easy," while Clint looks around wild-eyed, then seems to realize he can see again. He focuses on Steve's face, then looks up at Tony, getting reoriented. Looking almost surprised to see them. Tony gives him a little wave. 

They get the water going, because Clint's going to have to sit if he wants any kind of privacy, and the tub is _cold_. Clint's already freezing, shivering under Steve's hand while Tony cranks the hot water all the way up and tests it with his hand. "Jacuzzi," he says, flicking his fingers in the spray, "Seriously, Clint. Bubbles and everything." 

"But no cupholders," Steve says, and gets Clint up to move him. Tony glares. Turns the cold tap, then adjusts it back.

"Headrests," he counters, " _Hydromassage jets_." Steve's not sure what that is. He shrugs as Clint folds shakily into the bottom of the tub and holds his hand out for the sprayer. Tony hands it over, repeating, " _Massage jets_ ," like Clint's choice to use the nearer, simpler bathroom boggles him. "And wall-to-wall carpeting."

Steve shoves him out of the door. Pats Clint's arm to get his attention then points at himself and towards the hall. "Be right outside, okay? Shout if you need anything." Clint gives him a thumbs-up, so he goes, leaving the door open a bit so he can check on Clint. Just in case he _does_ come in danger of drowning.

\-----

He doesn't, but he does need a hand with his hair--his shoulder too stiff to really manage--and to be hauled almost bodily back out of the tub. "Don't slip," Tony tells him, tossing a giant-size towel around him as soon as Steve has him out and back on his feet. He's flushed from the hot water, but it also makes him look more feverish. He's warm enough that Steve half expects his breath to appear in puffs of vapor, even in the steam-heated bathroom. 

He looks wobbly again, and if he'd been even slightly less filthy, Steve might have regretted getting him up at all. Clint lets himself be steered to sit on the toilet lid again and hunches, holding the towel shut with one hand. His knuckles are badly scraped, the scabs softened by the hot water and bleeding again. He's leaving pink streaks on the white of the towel. 

"I'll get you some water," Tony says, to Clint, but handing the hearing aids to Steve. Clint looks like he's had enough of being touched for the time being and is distracted anyway. Not paying either of them any attention. "There's glasses in the workshop. I'll be right back."

\-----

Usually only Tony or Nat come to sit on his bed, the others preferring to sit by the desk or in a chair pulled up nearby. Nat, when she comes, leans against the footboard and puts her feet up, legs pressed up alongside his own, and reads. Tony rambles.

Clint's half asleep when the bed dips, a weight heavier than Natasha. Too heavy even for Tony, and silent. He hates the alarm that shoots through him, but when he jerks the rest of the way awake he hears the rustle of the sheets, the thump of his own foot hitting the wall. Thor gives him a raised-eyebrows look. It's not really surprise.

"Hey," Clint says, and relaxes. Realizes he's seen very little of Thor, and adds, "Thought you'd forgot me." He grins to show he's kidding. Kicks Thor a little the way he might Tony. His head still hurts, and the disoriented not-quite-there feeling is sticking around. He's too tired to try to figure out Thor and his un-Thor like behavior.

"Pulled the short straw?" he tries. Then adds, "For babysitting duty?" in case Thor doesn't get the reference. It falls flat. Thor continues to sit there, quiet and troubled, until Clint kicks him again. 

He hates to admit that the silent presence makes him tense and antsy, makes him flinch every time Thor shifts his weight. Even Natasha reading wasn't this quiet, with the regular turning of pages and murmured under-the-breath commentary. He shifts around on to his side so he can see Thor if he opens his eyes. Feels paranoid and ridiculous.

"I would not harm you," Thor says, sounding earnest. Like he really needs Clint to hear it, so Clint nods even though he has no idea what track Thor's on. "It was--" Thor starts, then shakes his head and pats Clint's leg in a very Nat-like gesture, strangely delicate for him, and doesn't finish.

"You're so weird," Clint hears himself say, and then exhaustion pulls him under and he's asleep again.

\-----

Clint goes from being a shaky, intolerant patient to an aggressive intolerant one pretty much overnight, going to angry and lashing out with practically no warning. Fighting now because he couldn't before, Bruce tells himself, trying to be patient as Clint rips out the IV yet again and then fixes him with a stubborn-jawed glare.

"Fine. Suit yourself," Bruce sighs, and decides against dramatically throwing his arms up, "Be dehydrated."

"Last I checked," Clint says, scowling. He's propped up on pillows, which Bruce would have thought would be enough to render anyone's tantrum ineffectual, but Clint doesn't let it get in his way. "I thought I had a room in this building."

"You do," Bruce says, and doesn't say, _good luck getting there_.

"Can I at least wear my own clothes?" He's wearing a too-large sweater that says 'SHIELD MATH DEPT' which is probably Tony's idea of a joke. The collar is pulled out from where Clint's continuously fussed at it.

It's still a problem getting Clint's arms into things, his shoulder on one side and elbow on the other protest too much movement. _Clint_ protests too much movement, snarling now instead of flinching away. 

"Anything in particular you want me to get? Something with a zipper, maybe? Or Natasha can go through your drawers again. She can pick something out." 

Clint glares. "I've been looking through this door at Tony's stupid lab for _days_ ," he says, changing tack. They haven't had him back nearly long enough for the view to be getting on his nerves quite that much, but Bruce doesn't mention it.

"I'll get you a book," Bruce says, "If you're _really_ good, I might get you a TV."

Clint doesn't look appeased, but he doesn't answer either.

\-----

Bruce brings him a TV anyway, and Clint feels kind of like a dick for not being more cooperative. Actually watching it makes his head swim--he can't track the movement or even really focus for long. He has no concentration for it, losing track too easily to follow anything longer than commercials, but he keeps it on anyway, the low murmur and dim glow breaking up the silence and dark of Stark Tower at night.

Natasha's fallen asleep at the end of the bed, head pillowed on her arm, book closed on her lap with a finger between its pages to keep her place. She's leaning in the corner made by footboard and wall, legs stretched out, ankles crossed. The cool light from the screen flickers over her. She actually looks comfortable.

Clint isn't. His ribs hurt with every breath, and the bandages Bruce had wrapped around various parts of him feel too constricting. He starts to rub at his eyes--the edges of his lids are still irritated, and itch--then stops. Feels his breath leave him in a whimper. 

Natasha shifts at the sound, sighing as she changes position. Her book slips free of her grasp and falls closed on to the mattress. Clint blinks. Remembers that he can and that nobody is there but him and Nat. There's no more gunk sealing his eyes and even if there was, no one's going to stop him from trying to scrub it away.

He lets his hand fall anyway, curling the fingers loosely around his throat. Just because the collar of the sweater is itchy. 

\-----

"Checking on the twins?" Tony asks, as Steve pads across the lab. Steve gives him a questioning look. "Natasha's with him," Tony clarifies. He's wielding a screwdriver and points it towards Clint's temporary room. 

"Oh." Tony has half of the computer they had used to find Clint disassembled and scattered in pieces around him. He sits on the floor in the middle of the pile of parts, sorting screws and wires and pieces of plastic and glass. Steve watches for a minute, then asks, "Building something?"

Tony shrugs. "Nah. Don't want Clint to get out here and ask what it is." He looks at the pile with no expression on his face, then snorts softly and looks up. A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. "I think he's getting close to making a break for freedom."

" _Bruce_ may be close to making a break for freedom," Steve says, and wanders over to take a seat in one of the chairs still pulled up by the desk. There's still junk strewn about from the last night they'd spent sitting there, hoping Clint wasn't killed before they could get to him. Peanuts, Tony's empty tumbler, torn and crumpled up scraps of paper from note-taking and equations and restless scribbling. 

"Bruce Hulks out and he's gonna be one sorry--" Tony stops. It's not funny the way it would have been just a couple of weeks ago. The idea of it, of Clint getting thrashed when he's already in bad shape, makes Steve a little sick. It brings up images in his head of Clint blind and disoriented. Tony frowns at his computer parts. Waves his screwdriver at the wreck littering his floor. "Anyway," he says, "I think it was traumatizing Thor."

Steve looks at the monitor where they'd watched Clint-- _Monitor One_ , he thinks-- and nods. "I can see how it would." Thor's a man of action. Waiting, watching, all the while helpless, was enough to get to any of them. Sitting here by the reminder of it makes even Steve's skin feel too tight. Makes his heart race a bit in remembered horror.

"Yeah? Well, he's not going to mope around in _my_ lab while he does it," Tony says, like Thor is being inconsiderate and rude. He unfolds from his place on the floor and comes over to turn screws and pull cables.

Steve watches him gut some computer attachment. Asks, "And you? You're okay?" because Tony builds like a fiend when he's upset and it looks like he's been here for _hours_.

Tony taps Monitor One with the handle of his screwdriver, a gesture that's almost fond. It makes a soft little _ping-ping_ noise on the darkened glass. "We got him, didn't we?" he says, and grins.

\-----

"I want you all to know," Bruce announces, stalking into the kitchen, "that Clint is in danger of losing his damn life."

Steve raises his eyebrow, looking up from the sandwich he's watching Tony construct with architectural precision. "Is he still being cantankerous?"

"Cantankerous?" Tony says, arranging slices of cheese in a circular pattern, "Really, Steve? You don't want to go with persnickety?"

Bruce yanks the fridge door hard enough to make its contents rattle, pulls out bottles of water and not-quite slams them down on the counter. Then he pulls out a chair, sits down, and deflates. He drops his head into his hands and stays that way.

"Cheddar?" Tony offers, using his knife to wave it at Bruce. Bruce takes it, plucking it off the blade with one finger and his thumb. Chews sullenly. Tony stabs an olive with a toothpick and hands that over, too. 

\-----

"Clint."

Clint looks up, glowering, then recognizes Steve. His expression clears. "Oh. Hey, Cap." 

"You tormenting Bruce for a reason?"

Clint looks like he has to think about it. Pulls uneasily at the collar of his sweater, then lets his arm hang from it, fingers hooked there, stretching the fabric out even farther. He lets go when he catches Steve watching and says, "No," quietly. There's a troubling, distant look on Clint's face. Steve holds up the bottles of water.  
"Bruce says drink or else you're back on the IV."  
Clint's mouth works like he's not sure what expression to make. He rubs at the side of his neck, where a dark bruise spreads forward to his ear and up to disappear into his hairline. 

"It's just water, Clint."

Clint gives a snort of unhappy laughter and nods, looking about as put upon as Bruce had, but lets Steve open a bottle and press it into his hands. He's still too hot. Warmer than before, and now Steve recognizes his hazed look as fever. Days on the concrete without any kind of protection from the cold hadn't done Clint any favors, and Steve tries to keep the sudden anger from showing on his face. 

Clint turns the bottle restlessly in his hands. "I'll throw it up," he says eventually, a quiet warning. 

"It's okay if you do." Steve shrugs. "But try to go slow." Clint doesn't look like he thinks it's okay. Clint looks like he's had about as much humiliation as he's willing to tolerate. His jaw is set, his mouth a stubborn line, but he doesn't have it in him to face Steve down and eventually sighs and gives in.

"I spend all my time around here puking." He says.

\-----

Clint does, in fact, spend quite a bit of time after that puking. "The price of hyperbole," Tony tells him, not unsympathetically, "I've been there." Clint laughs shakily, then groans. His fever's still up and his hair is damp with sweat, dark where it sticks to his forehead. Tony pats at it with a towel, but when the end of it falls in Clint's face, he swats at it.

"Tony," he complains, but doesn't follow it up with anything.

Tony tosses the towel aside. Hops carefully up onto the edge of the bed and waits for the rest. Clint doesn't continue. Stays quiet so long that Tony thinks he might have drifted off, but then his hand moves to tug at the now sweat soaked collar of his sweater and then away again. 

"Everything okay?" Tony asks, and thinks that's the stupidest question he could have come up with, really. Clint's not scrawny by any means, but he's lost weight during his captivity. His eyes are dark with lack of sleep, smudged still with bruises and ringed by scrapes along the curve of his cheekbone and the edge of his brow. Scabbed where blows had split his skin. His throat is a mess of color, the sickly green of healing bruises and the deeper purple of fresher ones, dark scratches from the hood's strap as well as Clint's own fingernails, where he'd torn at himself trying to get it off. There's burns by his collar bone, visible where the sweater is sagging away. Double prongs of raw flesh, like the remains of some kind of snake bite.

The relief of finding Clint is wearing off. Tony doesn't like this next step of processing what they'd found and seen. Of thinking about what Clint had been through. He doesn't think Clint is too fond of it, either. "You want to talk about it?" Tony asks anyway, feeling like an asshole because he kind of hopes Clint doesn't. Because _seeing_ what they'd done to Clint, _watching_ it, was more than enough. "I'll commiserate if you do. I was held in a cave once. You know this story."

Clint snorts. Then waves a hand vaguely by the side of his head and says, "These things are really starting to kill me." 

"How long can you wear those for, anyway?" Tony says, letting himself be steered into the subject change, "I never knew you had them. Why wouldn't you tell us? You know I hate secrets. Is it because you think our friendship isn't true? Do you need more hugs?" Even fevered, Clint gives him a look. Then he lets his breath out and sighs a little.

"Just. I got used to keeping it to myself." Clint's mouth pulls a little. It's not a smile, but it has that edge of self-deprecation that Clint has when he's making a joke about fucking up. "I guess it would have helped if you guys had known. Sorry."

Tony winces. Scratches under his shirt, at the skin bordering his arc reactor. That feeling of look-what-you-got-yourself-into, of being a pain in other people's asses isn't an unfamiliar one. He says, "Geez, Clint," and snags another bottle of water from the table. Twists the cap off. "Here. Doc's orders. Don't hurl."

Clint lets him hold it a moment, while he takes out his hearing aids then works his jaw. "That always feels weird," he says, and trades Tony for the water. "I can lip read. Just remember to look at me when you talk."

"Am I the keeper of your gadgets now?" Tony asks, because he hasn't seen Clint hand them to anyone else yet.

Clint shrugs. Drinks. Hands the bottle back. He looks uneasy, and this different, quiet Clint worries Tony. He says, "Never mind. You sleep. I've got them. Just ask JARVIS to give me a shout if I'm not around when you want them back."

\-----

It's quiet, but not dark when he wakes. There's a faint glow. A cool blue reflecting dimly off things, rimlighting the edges of a hunched human form. Clint can feel the warmth and the weight of the person, where they're sort of resting against one of his shins. 

He pulls his leg up, gets as much leverage as he can, and kicks. Twists as soon as he makes contact, as soon as the figure falls, surprised enough to go over, even if the kick wasn't that square. Arms grab for him, but he kicks again with the other foot, and the impact shoots up his leg, sharp in his aching knee, and then he shoves hard and is away, and falling.

Hitting the floor jars his whole body. It feels like his ribs explode. His chin clips the floor, and his brain turns to jelly for a moment. His senses swim. His instincts scream at him to go for cover, to make distance, but his limbs are suddenly out of his control, and as he starts to get some coordination back, he feels the hum of a voice through the floor and yells, "Fuck you. You think this is funny?" His hand finds something on the floor and he throws it. Scrambles back, in a useless bid to avoid retaliation.

Then the lights come up, and Tony's there, pressing his shirt to his bleeding nose and holding his other hand up in a calming gesture, or signaling Clint to stay back. Clint feels the wall behind his shoulders, the floor under his feet and hands. It's cold, but smooth. Not cracked concrete. He can _see_. He takes a breath and lets it out. His lip is bleeding. 

Tony's hovering in his vision, probably talking, because it's Tony, but Clint's vision swims in and out too much to make anything out. Behind Tony, the door fills up with Steve and Thor and then Bruce. He's safe, suddenly. Unexpectedly back with them, and his brain can't keep up. He looks at Tony, sitting across the floor from him, bleeding from his nose and feels himself grin. Starts laughing.

Tony wipes his shirt across his face one last time and lets it drop. He's a fucking mess, and it's _hilarious_. His lips move. He's saying, "Clint, what the fuck?" Then Bruce steps closer, checks Tony's nose and hands him some gauze. Clint grins, then snorts in helpless laughter.

"--lip read." he catches from Tony. His face is mostly turned to Bruce, but he's giving Clint quick, scared looking glances.

Bruce says, carefully, "Clint, you need to calm down."

For a second more, Clint's _better_ than calm. He starts to tell Bruce that, but then the doc's expression ruins it, cutting through his cheerful, goofy high. He looks angry and scared and tired and Clint can't breathe, suddenly, and reaches to tug at his clothing. To pull it away from his chest and throat. Nothing's funny anymore. The walls are too close and the door is crowded too full, and Tony's still bleeding over his own hand. 

His throat's closing, but there's nothing around his neck to rip free. He can feel his heart start to race in reaction, thudding almost painfully, and then Bruce is sliding in next to him, taking his head in both hands to make Clint look at him.

"Clint," he says, forming the words carefully, "You're having a panic attack. You're okay. Take a breath."

He grabs for Bruce's wrists, doesn't want to be held, but Bruce won't let go until he does as he's told and eventually he manages a proper, non-wheezing inhalation. He thinks he makes a surprised sound at the relief of it, but his heart rate starts to slow when the next is just as easy. His breathing steadies, finding the rhythm of Bruce's "In," and, "Now out." 

By the time Bruce lets him go, he feels tired and limp. Like his body is too heavy to move on its own. 

"Let's get you back to bed," Bruce is saying, "And then make sure Tony's face isn't broken. Are you hurt?"

Clint's not sure, but Bruce is still looking at him, waiting for an answer. "I'm so fucking happy to see you," Clint tells him.


	5. Chapter 5

Clint has JARVIS bring the lights up. All the way out into the lab, every lightbulb is at full capacity, and Clint has his arm thrown over his face to shield his still-sensitive eyes from it. The TV blares rubbish--some home shopping channel cycling through its wares in a friendly drone. Steve finds it too loud to be soothing, but Clint still hasn't put his hearing aids back in, so it's either for the sake of the hum, or he just has no idea what volume its set at.

Clint's been quiet. Hasn't said a word all day, to any of them. Not even to Natasha, who's finally had to leave her post at the end of the bed to check in with SHIELD and put in some training hours. Hopefully to catch some proper sleep in her own bed, too. It leaves Steve alone with Clint and he doesn't know what to say, but Clint won't look at him either so it's something of a moot point.

There's a product change on the TV, and with the switch in sales person the drone changes pitch from calm monotone to upbeat cheer, and Clint shifts. Mutters a protest that Steve can't quite make out. He asks, "Clint?" even knowing Clint can't hear him.

"--fucking touch me--" he makes out, and then another murmur.

Not sure if it's a good idea, Steve scoots the chair closer and takes Clint's wrist. There's no resistance, but it's not clear whether that's because Clint knows it's him, or because he's half asleep. "Dim the lights, JARVIS, please," Steve says, and when the bulbs dim, tugs Clint's arm away from his face so he can use the other to feel his forehead. It's probably not that accurate a way to measure temperature, but it doesn't matter--it's hard to miss that Clint is burning up. If the fever doesn't break soon, they'll have to take him to medical after all, and hope Clint tolerates it. 

"Don't," Clint says, strangely clear, and Steve frowns. And then Clint is gasping awake, scrambling upright with a cry. He doubles over right after, groaning and clutching at his ribs and stays that way, his breath leaving him in a soft whine. If Clint could hear himself, he'd probably never let that sound out.

Steve gets a hand on his back, shushes--another sound Clint wouldn't put up with if he could hear it--when Clint jerks at the touch, and another on his chest and eases him upright. "Easy, Clint. You're okay. Do you remember falling? You're just a bit banged up." He tries for a smile, "Well, a bit more banged up."

Clint stares at him for long moments, then says, "Cap?" He sounds incredibly relieved, his voice tinged with disbelief. Then his expression clears and he says, "Oh. Yeah. Right. _Right_ ," and Steve can piece it together, but he wishes he couldn't.

\-----

It's quiet without his hearing aids. Clint's not sure how to ask them back from Tony after nearly breaking his nose. He's not sure he wants them, anyway. His head is pounding, and every bit of sensory input seems too much. Even the lights are making him feel claustrophobic--too much information assaulting him after so long seeing only dark that he feels surrounded by it--but he doesn't dare turn them off. He keeps getting lost, forgetting where he is, and he's already hurt Tony. At least this way the landmarks are instantly visible. The displacement less extreme than when he can't see.

For a while, he drifts. His arm over his face blocking out enough that the light doesn't feel quite so sharp. Doesn't feel like it's stabbing his eyes.

Something moves. He notices it peripherally, too tired to be alarmed until someone takes his wrist. Then there's a touch at his face and his breath leaves him.

They're going to put the hood back on. And Clint will be damned if--

And then it's Steve, helping him straighten up, his voice a calm hum as he checks Clint's ribs and for a few seconds, Clint's surprised to see him, and then he remembers where he is and _of course_ it's Steve. He laughs a little. Steve looks at him with a tight expression, like he thinks Clint's losing it. 

"I thought--" Clint starts to explain, then stops because Steve's not reacting to the light tone he's using--or is pretty sure he's using--and just keeps looking at him with a steady, measuring gaze. His mouth turned down at the corners into a look Steve probably doesn't know is coming off unhappily strained.

"Do you know where you are?" he asks, and by his face, Clint knows he's using his _I'm Captain America_ voice. Clint also likes to think of it as his _don't be alarmed citizens_ voice, all friendly, calm authority. It works on the hysterical masses, but right now it's a wasted effort, because Clint can't hear him. Steve must think he's about to have a freak out on his hands. _Another_ freak out. It's a little annoying.

"Medical room, off Tony's lab," he says. Steve nods. Doesn't ask anything else.

"Did I pass?" Clint pushes, "Gold star? Happy face sticker?"

Steve looks like he's actually considering the question. Or maybe like he's picking through a minefield of words, and that's _a lot_ annoying. "You're doing fine," he says after a bit, and Clint snorts. 

Then, when Steve stays silent, lets the act drop and asks, "Tony okay?"

"You didn't hurt anybody, Clint. Tony's fine. He's given himself worse bloody noses setting stuff off in the lab. Here. Lie back down." Steve turns away to get something out of a bowl, and Clint feels a spike of anxiety, but feel ridiculous giving into it. He doesn't turn to look.

Instead he says, "Tony doing worse to himself isn't really a measure of anything," then gasps a little when something cold and wet settles on his forehead.

"Just a towel. There's probably some modern gizmo that works better, but a cool washcloth always did the trick when I was a kid."

Clint doesn't think there's a gizmo, unless drugs count. He reaches to get rid of the washcloth, pushing it out of his face. Sees Steve's expression as he does it and says, "Kinda cold, Cap."

Steve smiles like he's going along with the joking tone, but what he says is, "Sorry. I'll be careful to keep it out of your eyes."

For a second Clint wants to say something snappy and mean, embarrassed by how transparent he is, but he's suddenly too tired to be anything but grateful that he doesn't have to watch out for it himself. Doesn't have to hide how badly he needs his vision clear. "Okay," he says, and lets Steve replace the towel.

\-----

"Should you be up?" Tony asks, without looking. He's got his head bent over something, almost too low for Clint to make out what he's saying. He's got safety glasses on as he pokes and frowns and pokes and their colorful frame is obscuring his face even more.

Clint drops into a chair, totally fucking grateful that it's there and not five more steps away. "I heard about this soup," Clint says, and gestures woefully in the direction of the elevators that would lead to the communal area and the kitchen. 

"You look like shit," Tony tells him, still without actually looking. "Go back to bed. JARVIS. Summon someone with soup."

"I'll get there," Clint snaps. The chair has wheels. Clint considers the chance of it tipping him out when he tries to get up against the indignity of trying to roll his way to the elevator.

Tony finally looks at him, flipping his goggles up, and gives Clint a quick measuring look. Eyes flicking up and down, like when he's surveying the armor for paint damage. "It'll probably fall over when you get up," he says, "Also, there's a step down to the elevator. Someone should really put in a ramp."

Clint groans. Folds his arms on Tony's desk and lets his head fall into them. It's an unpleasant maneuver. It makes his head feel like it's filled with jelly that wobbles long after he stops moving. "This is New York," he mumbles, "There's probably codes about that. Accessibility or whatever."

"Except this is a private floor." Tony goes back to his fiddling, then stops again. Reaches over to lay his hand over Clint's face without any warning or any of Steve's tact. 

It's not startling--one doesn't hang around Tony Stark and expect one's personal space to be respected--but it's a bit surprising that it doesn't hurt, either. Clint says, "Ow," anyway. Then, "Do you mind?"

Tony makes an exaggerated calculating face. "I think you're just about well done, Barton," he says, and gives his cheek a little pop before he takes his hand back "but you can stay. Just don't touch anything. And if you pass out, I'm not calling Banner, I'm calling _Natasha_ , you get me?"

Clint nods. Says, "Jerk."

\-----

The flicker of the TV keeps waking him, too much like the play of light and shadow on his face when they'd taken the hood off. He keeps jerking awake expecting pain, takes whole minutes to figure out why it doesn't come. 

Steve is gone, and it's the first time they've left him alone since--The first time they've left him alone. For a little while, it's good to not be under anyone's scrutiny. To not have Thor's face go all long and dark when he scratches a scab off his throat, to not have Banner give him patient concerned looks.

And then it's too quiet and too empty and too _alone_. The towel's gone from his head--Steve taking his promise seriously--and Clint carefully swings his legs over the side of the bed. Slides carefully until his weight settles onto his feet then takes his time finding his balance.

There's a steady light on in the lab. Brighter than before, when Steve had dimmed them. Tony, probably. 

Clint heads for it.

\-----

"You want some goggles?" Tony asks, taking a sip of scotch and holding his welding gun like a cowboy with a six shooter, business end pointed at the ceiling. He pulls the trigger for effect and Clint twitches at the snap. "Come on. They look cool."

"They look stupid," Clint says into his arms. He sounds tired and cranky. Tony grins. 

"You can be my assistant. Do important jobs like--Like here. Hold this scotch."

Clint looks grumpy about it, but he does it even though the base of the tumbler stays resting on the desk. He swirls it about absently. Says, "This is why Banner hates working with you isn't it?"

"That's hurtful and also a lie. Bruce doesn't hate working with me. I'm _inspiring_." 

Clint doesn't answer. Watches the scotch spin in the glass as he swirls it some more. Tony takes it, takes a sip and hands it back. "Now," he says, doing his evil scientist finger wiggle, "prepare to be impressed."

"You're soldering."

Tony makes the gun go _snap-snap_ and Clint over-swirls the scotch, splashing it over his fingers. Tony raises the goggles to give him a look. "This is why we can't take you anywhere nice," he tells him, and pulls the tumbler away. Clint's fingers slide off it without resistance. "And that's good scotch. You're fired as my assistant."

"Good," Clint says, practically a mumble, "Worst job I ever had." His eyes are glazed. Tony decides to leave him be and pulls his safety glasses back on. 

\-----

There's a pop of light. His body jerks. He can't breathe. The hood fills his mouth when he gasps for air, but when he hits the floor, someone pulls him back up by the strap of it, and he can't fight it. He's still spasming. Can't get his fingers to work properly. The strap is choking him, but he can't get his legs under him to take any of his weight off it.

He wheezes when they let him go, falling to hands and knees. He's freezing, but his lungs and throat are on fire. The lack of air is making his head spin, but eventually he can slow his breathing enough to pull air in through the hood again. His limbs are shaky. Like his joints are made of jelly, but at least the tight feeling in his chest is fading.

There's a pop of light. 

\-----

Tony's attaching two parts of the world's prettiest shock-and-crush-resistant outer shell, when Clint suddenly goes sideways and down, making an almost comical grab for the edge of the work-table as he goes. He misses, which is also goofy looking, considering it's Clint, but at least he doesn't clock himself on the way down.

"I told you that would tip--" Tony starts, pulling his goggles down to hang around his neck, but when he peers under the table, Clint's staring at nothing. His head is tilted in Tony's direction, but his eyes are unfocused. He's gasping for breath and for a second Tony thinks he might be choking, then realizes that's stupid. He drops his work and comes around the table, worried Clint might be about to pass out. "Clint?"

Clint jerks and scrambles away. Spits curses, and nope. Only an idiot would get close to him now.

"JARVIS, get me some help."

\-----

Clint fights and Thor looks like he's reliving his worst nightmare--or maybe his saddest nightmare, eyes sorrowful as he ducks under the table and slides in next to Clint. It's easy enough for him to catch Clint's' wrist and maneuver him so he's leaning against Thor's chest. To pin him there until his thrashing calms.

"Easy, Shieldbrother." Thor says, and runs a big hand over Clint's head, as open and easy with his worry and affection as he is with everything else. "Be calm now. You are safe."

Clint makes a choked noise and tries to pull free. It's weak. There's no fight behind it anymore. "Please," Clint says, his aggression crumbling into desperation, frighteningly reminiscent of the recording. "Don't. Don't."

"I will not," Thor promises gravely in that heartfelt way that Tony usually finds hilarious. It's not funny now. Would maybe be comforting if Clint could hear it, but Tony still has his hearing aids, and he's not looking at Thor.

Clint's free hand is at his throat and when Thor lets him go, the other follows. He tears at nothing, then quiets. Subsides into choked whimpers, his feet kicking weakly at the floor. There's a sort of broken rhythm to it. To the way Clint jerks then twitches then stills. He's panting now, and after a second, makes another attempt to get loose. It's just a brief effort to get an elbow into Thor's side, not even coherent enough to aim properly and try to get him where it will hurt, and then Clint deflates again, going limp with what sounds almost like a sob.

"Thor." Tony ducks under the table, then backs up, crouching out of kicking range, "Thor, stop _patting_ him. You're making it worse."

Thor stops, but his expression floods with anguish. More emotion shows on his face than Tony thinks most people even have. He says, "Easy there, Blondilocks. This lab has a one freak out at a time policy, and Clint's got dibs."

Thor probably doesn't catch all of that, but he nods and gets it together. Gets an arm around Clint's chest and pulls him close. Clint murmurs, "No," followed by something garbled that Tony can't make out. 

Then he takes a deep shuddering breath and blinks, confused, and groggy. He pulls at Thor's restraining arm, but Thor firms his grip and won't let go. "C'mon," Clint tries, and it's slurred enough that Tony's not sure if he's coming out of it or not.

"Not till you know where you are, Clint," he says, "Sit tight a minute."

Clint blinks at him, processing slowly, which means he _isn't_ back. He slumps back against Thor, quiet, then jerks a little like he's startling and says, "Tony?" and follows it a good minute later with, "What did I--?"

Tony grins. "Surprise me once, shame on you," he says, "Break my nose twice--"

"I didn't," Clint says and has to stop to swallow, "Didn't break your nose." His glare is wobbly, but he's trying. He's even managing to look genuinely offended, in a shaky kind of way.

"Stark," Thor says, and scolded by Thor. That's new. Tony holds his hands up to signal peace.

"You're fine, Clint," he says, "You tipped yourself off the chair. You didn't get near anyone, okay?" he waits for Clint to nod understanding then adds, "You need to stop falling off the furniture now, Barton, really."

\-----

He wakes up in a different room, sunlight falling across him even though the lights are down, and Steve is sitting there. Back to being baby-sat, Clint thinks and frowns. His head feels like it's full of jello or cotton--everything fuzzy and muted---and the IV is back in. The tape securing the needle itches like mad.

"Bruce said you wanted your own room and clothes," Steve says, putting down whatever he was working on. It's leather wrapped, but it could just as easily be a tablet computer as a book. "Maybe it'll help?"

Clint sits up, slowly, painfully, and looks down at himself. The stupid oversized sweatshirts he's been wearing are gone, replaced by a jacket he usually wears for practice or to go running. It's not something Clint would normally wear to sleep in, but the material is soft with wear and with the bandages around his ribs, the zipper doesn't even scratch at his skin. He touches the flaking decal--just cracked patches of white now, the vague outline of an animal logo. He remembers accidentally stealing it from a roommate years ago, borrowing it when he needed some civvies and then forgetting to return it. It's strange to have something of his own on again. Like his room, it feels familiar and not. Like he's been gone for a long time. 

"Found something with a zipper, huh?" he says to Steve, and doesn't think about them undressing him. His heart beats hard a few times, and he's not sure why. Steve and Tony had helped him before and it hadn't bothered him. 

"You were awake," Steve tells him. "You don't remember?"

"Don't remember this," Clint says and holds up his hand with the IV. The blankets pool in his lap. He's cold, but it feels like a permanent condition. He hasn't been warm in. Since. For a while.

"Clint," Steve says, in that quiet, serious tone that Clint's starting to learn means he either looks like shit or like a maniac. 

"Tony," Clint says, suddenly remembering, "He was--Crap. I got Tony again."

Steve smiles a little. He looks tired. "You fell off a chair."

Oh. That was. "That's good," he says, and grins in relief. Steve doesn't grin back.

\-----

"Be mindful with him," Thor grumbles, like he's trying to not be nagging and judgmental, but can't help himself.

Bruce wants to roll his eyes or maybe snap at him, but when he raises his head to say something, Thor's face is all earnest concern and woe and he can't bring himself to. "I'm _being_ careful," he says instead, "for god's sake."

Clint's not exactly out of it, but he's not all there either, answering questions fine but with a hazy far away look. They've managed to get him undressed with what these days counts as a minimum of fuss, but with Clint allowing it more than cooperating. "You're okay," Bruce tells him, even though he doesn't seem distressed, while they wait for Natasha to finish rooting through Clint's closet, in search of something they can get him into without pulling his re-sprained shoulder.

"Can't hear anything," Clint mumbles, sounding exhausted. Like he thinks they've forgotten, and Thor touches his back, careful, not even really resting his hand so much as just making contact.

Natasha comes back with a threadbare jacket, sweatshirt material, and shrugs. "It's this or a dress shirt, or Cap's jam jams again," she says with a smile, then wrinkles her nose a little. "The--" she makes a small gesture, awkward, then says, "The collar's a bit close."

"We'll fold it down," Bruce says, "C'mon, he's freezing."

Clint's flushed with fever, and combined with his injuries he looks miserable and fragile and worn. Bruce slides the jacket around his shoulders, dislodging Thor, and says, "Can you get an arm in?" Clint does, then gets the other in with only a bit more trouble, and Bruce tugs the zipper up, leaving the collar open enough that he can push it back on Clint's shoulders, leaving plenty of space around his neck.

\-----

Tony brings him a giant mug and a spoon. "Soup," he announces, "Since your quest for sustenance was rudely interrupted. Still hungry?"

Clint isn't. Hadn't been in the first place, really. "Thanks, Tony."

Tony says, "I should have just _got_ it, instead of messing with you." His smirk is apologetic instead of mocking. It's not a normal Tony expression, and it's irritating as hell to be the target of it.

"It's fine. It's _really_ fine. You were working. You guys don't have to act all weird around me all the time."

"Are you talking about Thor?" Tony asks, cocking his head a bit. He looks like he wants to say something sarcastic and insulting about that, or at least make some observations about Thor's Thor-ness, except his expression is too somber. Like he's trying to be normal, but coming up with the gently mocking smile he has on is the best he can do.

Clint's talking about everyone. "You're bringing me soup," he points out.

"And toys. But soup first." Tony sets the mug on the chair Steve had been using. An uncomfortable high backed thing that Clint mostly uses to hang towels and gear on. "Can you sit up?"

"Yeah, I can sit up."

"I wasn't sure, what with you taking dives all the time." Tony says, but helps him up anyway. Holds out the spoon, "Which hand is most functional?"

Clint considers that. Not which hand to take the spoon with, but the question. The fact that his clothing options have been dictated by the limited range of motion in his shoulder and the pain in his elbow. Drawing a bow would be impossible right now. He looks at Tony, and by the look on Tony's face, Clint thinks he probably looks about as scared as he suddenly feels.

Tony bops him with the spoon. Gently bouncing it against his forehead. "No, Barton. If I'm at the epicenter of another freak out, Steve's going to keel haul me, innocent or not." He pushes the spoon into Clint's hand. Closes Clint's fingers around it. "Now eat, and then I will show you shiny things."

Clint blinks. Surprised out of his panic. It takes a second for him to process what Tony's saying. To catch back up with the conversation. "My mother always warned me about boys making promises," he grumbles, but scoots himself a little closer to chair-cum-sidetable, careful not to tug the IV line. 

The soup's hot, and even though he's mostly faking his appetite, it's not bad.

\-----

"Here," Tony says, even though Clint's not quite done eating. He stops and balances the mug on one knee, hand wrapped around its oversize handle as Tony gets a small box out of his pocket and picks something small and bullet shaped out of it. "You hold this one, and I'll get them in for you." 

He holds a hand out to let Tony drop the thing into, then watches him fiddle with the other, but can't help twitching at the touch of Tony's fingers on his face, at his jaw. He's already sitting, but his brain screams, _up, get up_ , and he has to bite his lip to stifle it. Tony's hand cuts in at the edge of his vision and he flinches, full body, before he can stop it. It's lucky he doesn't dump the remaining soup across his bed. "Sorry," he says, as Tony draws back.

"If you don't want to, Clint--" Tony says, letting it hang. Meaning _if you can't_. Clint takes a breath, examines the mug. 

"It's fine."

Tony waits for him to look back up before saying, "Doesn't look like it," and holds up what he's been trying to slide into Clint's ear. It's black and gun metal and actually kind of cool looking. Not anywhere as flashy as some of the stuff Tony comes up with. And it's _tiny_ , like it could get lost in his ear. There's a glowing ring around one end of it, giving off a cool blue light, but where it will be hidden once it's inserted. World's tiniest arc reactor, Clint thinks, even though Tony's explained that it's functionally somewhat different.

"No. Do it. I just. They." He bites down on the rest of it, and tilts his head away, giving Tony room to work, a better viewing angle. Hopefully it will reduce the amount of fussing at the side of his head.

It _should_ also cut off anything Tony wants to say--which is kind of funny, controlling the pace of Tony Stark's commentary--but Tony's perfectly happy to lean around to get back into Clint's field of vision. "No freak outs, Barton. Remember Steve killing me and how we want to avoid that," he says, using it as cover to move in close again, touching as little as he can. The tiny machine slides into his ear, uncomfortable at first, before it settles into its proper position and then it's just weird after having his hearing aids out for so long.

"Other side," Tony says, taking its partner back from Clint and fussing with it, activating the little blue ring. Tony was right. It _is_ shiny. Comfortable, too, after a few seconds of adjusting. He lets Tony slide the other in. Shakes his head a little to test for movement. His head feels a little better. Good enough to try it a little harder.

"Geez, Tony," he says, and grins. Tilts his head around. "You're going to have to put some music on before I know for sure, but--"

"Nice, huh?" Tony doesn't do modesty. He grins back in smug self satisfaction. "Water proof, interference proof, _indestructible_ , practically invisible, endless power, more or less, theoretically. They'll be even better once we get your probably crap SHIELD implant upgraded, but Bruce wouldn't agree to take a shot at head surgery." Tony's smirk means he's joking. Probably. "I'll make you a pair with comms routed through, but I don't think you want Cap able to shout in your ear during off time. How do they feel?"

Clint works his jaw. Swallows a few times. "Good, so far."

Tony makes a prompting gesture with his hand. An impatient little circle, "And?" he says.

"And you're a genius, Tony." Clint says, and would roll his eyes if he hadn't just spent time bobbling his head around.

\-----

Natasha is the only one really holding it together, and Steve thinks that's unfair as hell, because in a way, she has more right than any of them to be worried and distraught over Clint. 

"Can't do anything about it," she shrugs when Steve brings it up. She's in the kitchen, making Clint coffee that he probably shouldn't be having. She gestures at the machine, too big, too complicated, too _Stark_ for what they use it for, really, which is mostly simple black coffee. Steve can't get it do anything without steam hissing out of it in threatening plumes. "This is what I can do now," she says and smiles a little at him. 

"I'm pretty useless, too," Steve tells her, watching her tinker with the coffee machine, trying to get the pot in under the safety catch. "Bruce is pretty much the only one with an applicable skill set right now." And even that's been limited and had involved multiple calls to medical for advice.

Natasha turns to lean against the counter, her back to the machine, and looks at him for a while. "Thor thought war was a sport," she says, a bland observation, but with an edge hidden in it that Steve can't quite name. It's not angry or bitter, but it's _something_ , and something he doesn't usually hear in Natasha's voice. He can't place it. "He was shocked when it wasn't glorious. He's shocked by _this_. I can't be like him."

Steve gets the feeling she'd like to be, maybe, but that what's happened to Clint doesn't really surprise her. She's angry and terrified and worried, but it's nothing new. It's nothing she hasn't seen before. Nothing she hasn't been trained to withstand, probably.

The realization of that makes Steve go cold, a little. Makes his spine prickle, and Natasha smiles at him, a little humorously despite her worry, comforting and warm all at once. "I'm fine," she assures him, but it just makes the icy feeling worse.


	6. Chapter 6

To add insult to injury, the adhesive on the tape holding the IV needle gives Clint a rash. Bruce almost wants to laugh at the absurdity, but Clint looks _pissed_ and even if that's also a little bit funny in its own dark way, Bruce doesn't think it'll really help anything if he gives in to the chuckle that's rising in his throat. It feels a bit like it might choke him, and he has to swallow a few times before he can banish it entirely.

"Geez, Clint," he says instead, and gets a needle into Clint's other wrist, careful to use a different tape. A different _brand_ , even. Clint glares at him.

"Watch it. You. _Look_ at this." Clint's wrist is bruised from the needle and Bruce isn't sure if that's what he's supposed to be looking at, or if Clint means the itchy red patch, tape-size and rectangular except for where Clint's nails have scraped lines through it.

"Don't scratch," Bruce says, and can't believe that's what he's concerned about, when Clint's eyes are still red-rimmed, and bandages are peering out from under his clothing. When Clint's covered in cuts and burns and bruises. At least his fever's better, faded to an unsteady warmth. "You'll make it worse. I'll get you something to put on it in a minute."

Clint wrinkles his nose in disgust, awkwardly pulling his sleeve up and away from the rash. Bruce helps him tug the other one up as well, so it won't jar the needle and _oh god_ , the small things piling up. Clint looks like he's about to lose it over his sleeves sliding down again, the elastic at the cuffs loose and worn beyond any stretch.

"Could you roll them up?" he asks, grouchily holding out his hands, "I'd do it myself, but I can't move my goddamn arms that good."

"Maybe you should stop landing on them," Bruce says, then stops and shakes himself. Runs a hand over his face. "Oh, crap. Clint. I'm sorry. I didn't mean--"

"I'll try that next time," Clint says darkly, still holding his arms out, "Come _on_ , Bruce." Bruce leans a bit closer and folds the cuff of the nearer sleeve over a couple of times, then holds his hand out for the other, unwilling to reach over Clint and crowd him. Clint rolls his eyes. Twists a little to reach over.

"I'm _fine_ ," he says, and Bruce wonders that he can manage to sound sincere about it. Sincere and snippy and offended.

Bruce ignores it. "Sure," he says, releasing Clint's sleeve. Clint looks like he's taking exception to the lack of conviction in that reply and like he's about to snap something back, but that's when Natasha comes in with coffee and a sandwich and a book. Rescuing Bruce from another uptick of Clint surliness.

Clint eyes them as she sets the dishes down on the horrible chair no one but Steve ever wants to sit on. "Against doctor's orders," Natasha tells him, indicating the coffee with an elegant flourish and a conspiratorial grin. 

"Half a cup?" Clint complains, still peevish, but not quite as willing to be prickly at Natasha.

"Consider yourself lucky," Natasha tells him, and feels his face with the back of her fingers and then her palm. Clint glares.

"Is everybody just going to keep doing that?" he snaps, ill tempered enough that it surprises Bruce, considreing who he's talkign to, but Natasha either ignores the tone, or just doesn't care. 

"Yes," she tells him easily, "Get used to it," and settles herself on the edge of the bed, taking the coffee mug and pressing it into his hands. Clint wraps his fingers around the warm ceramic, sighing a little, and Bruce realizes he's still feeling cold, and too stubborn to say anything.

Natasha notices the same and starts to frown, then stifles it and tucks herself up on the bed next to Clint, opening her book. "Eat your lunch. I'll read to you."

"Is that some Russian tragedy?" Clint says, finally taking a sip, quirking his head to indicate the room and everything in it, "Don't you think this shit is enough?"

\-----

Steve finds Tony and Thor huddled like guilty children in the far corner of Tony's lab, peering into a laptop, like they don't want the risk of anyone seeing over their shoulders. If it have been _Bruce_ and Tony, Steve would have walked on by. Maybe even if it was Natasha, with her on-again off-again interest in Tony's engineering, albeit maybe only as far as it pertained to booby trapping. 

Thor, though. Thor was _never_ in the lab, unless it was to help mitigate some disaster Tony had set into motion. Definitely not to quietly hunch in concentration over a small screen.

"What are you up to?" Steve asks suspiciously, and they jump in surprise. Tony glares.

"Working, Cap. What are you doing here, anyway?"

He'd been on his way to see if Clint had left anything in the medical room. Maybe to dump the blankets down the laundry chute. He says, "Working on what, Thor?"

Thor looks at Tony. Steve scowls.

"Integration of technology and magic in Asgardian society," Thor says, and Steve doesn't even think he's been coached into that bald faced lie, because even Tony looks a little impressed that he's come up with it. Steve crosses his arms over his chest, and eventually Tony sighs in defeat and waves him over. 

He recognizes immediately what's on the screen. It's the grainy video feed from the warehouse, Clint hooded and on his knees with his head hanging down, someone stalking back and forth, silhouetted when they pass in front of the camera, something swinging from their hand. Steve must have been out of the room, because he doesn't remember this part, and every _second_ he'd witnessed is burned into his memory.

Tony pauses just as the blow lands, freezing the video with Clint's head whipped sharply to one side. Steve winces. "What are you doing?" he asks, voice tight. His mind linking that image automatically to the bruising and scrapes along Clint's cheekbone and brow.

Tony gestures at the screen, an oddly helpless motion, from him. Thor just glowers, eyes too blue, body too still as he stares at the screen and the image of Clint, knocked off-balance and on his way to the floor. Steve sees now that his hands are bound, that he has no way to catch himself, and re-allocates the scrapes on Clint's face, even though they could be from anything.

"We are trying to find," Thor says slowly, slouched in his chair, "what not to do."

"Everything sets him off," Tony explains, "I just touch him and he looks like he's going to jump out of his skin."

It's understandable. In fact, it's a miracle Clint's doing as well as he is. Steve knows men who've been broken by less. He starts to say so, but Tony waves him into silence. Moves the video slider and hits play. 

The hood is off and they're shocking Clint. He spasms on the ground, mouth open, probably screaming. Limbs twitching spasmodically.

" _Tony_ ," Steve says. 

"My torch," Tony says. "That's why he freaked in the lab. And," he moves the slider again, plays about three seconds of someone stroking Clint's head, then stops it before they beat him, freezing the image just as a man draws his hand back in preparation. "Here's why Thor's patting made it worse. And _here's_ why he kept twitching while I was putting the hearing aids in." 

Someone touches Clint's face, a tidy _tap-tap_ , rousing him from laying on the ground. Steve remembers seeing that gesture, but hadn't thought of it once they'd had Clint back. Hadn't thought of the significance of such a small motion.

"They _tortured_ him, Tony. He's going to be twitchy for a while. You can't do this. You can't make a--a _map_ of it."

"We can avoid--" Thor starts.

"Avoid what? Touching him?" He's not angry at them so much as furious at his own relived helplessness. He feels, actually, at little heartbroken at how desperate they are to avoid causing Clint further damage. At the contrast with Natasha's calm.

Tony makes a face, and Thor slouches a bit further down. "No," he says, quietly, "of course not." He looks up at Steve, swiveling in the chair, "I have not been feared by a brother in this way," he says, like it's a confession and spreads his hands, not a gesture aimed at Steve, but like he's examining his own palms. "He--" 

"He didn't know it was you," Steve sighs. Then, "Turn that off, okay? You'll just drive yourselves crazy."

Tony does, but when Steve leaves them, he and Thor stay sitting there in unhappy silence.

\-----

Tony drags himself back out of the lab, exhausted, angry, _depressed_. Thor's no where to be found anymore, and he thinks Steve was probably right. They weren't going to help anything through _research_ , and now he's just made Thor worse. 

Clint, at least, seems a bit better, but Clint goes from a stubbornly cranky version of himself to shattered and incoherent and back again at the drop of a hat. It's afternoon, but Tony hasn't slept. _He_ feels like a cranky version of himself. A cranky and heartsick version of himself.

"At least we have him back," he tells Bruce, rummaging in the kitchen for a mug. They've been somewhat isolationist since this _issue_ with Clint, and distracted. Pepper's not there to organize his life and dishes aren't high on anyone's list of priorities. Unless someone's taken with a bout of restless housecleaning, there's a marked shortage of clean plates and glasses. He fishes a mug out of the sink and gives it a quick rinse.

Bruce watches him fumble the coffee pot from the death grip of the safety catch and pour out the last dregs of it. "Yeah, there's that," he says dryly and Tony gives him a look.

"Sorry." It's a mutter. Then, "We need help. We really need help. _Clint_ needs help."

Tony can't disagree with that, but Clint's not going to accept help. Clint can barely tolerate _them_ , a lot of the time. Clint could actually use a solid once-over in medical, just to make sure, for all that he seems to have miraculously avoided catastrophic injury, but he's not going to tolerate that, either, and Tony tries to imagine which one of them would be enough of an asshole to try to make him. Natasha, maybe, if the need arises. Natasha could be heartless for the sake of survival.

He says so and Bruce takes a deep breath and lets it out. "It's not miraculous," he says, and for a second the rage he carries around with him flashes across his face, creating a brief, un-Bruce-like expression that then becomes something calmer, but unreadable. "They wanted him to last."

Tony gulps his coffee. Wishes it was gin. "He could still have, I don't know. Bruised organs or something." He has no idea what he's talking about. The internal workings of the human body aren't really his bag and Bruce looks like he doesn't need to worry about another thing that could go wrong with Clint. He looks tired and fed up, and it's not really fair to be angry at Clint, but Bruce's go-to reaction to emotional stress is anger--which isn't something that's that comfortable to think about, considering Bruce's go-to reaction to being angry. Tony rinses off another mug and splits his bottom-of-the-pot coffee with Bruce.

Bruce accepts the cheer-up offering and looks a bit guilty. A bit shamed. "I'm not really--" he says and trails off. Swirls the coffee absently, which is probably just stirring up the grounds that have made it through the filter.

"Not really mad at him," Tony prompts.

Bruce says, "I'm not. He's just . . . difficult."

"Thanks god he's difficult," Tony says, because at least that means he's still Clint and he knows Steve, at least, had been worried that by the time they got to him, that might not be the case any longer.

\-----

Bruce tries to be grateful for Clint's still being Clint, but after he switches back out with Natasha, Clint gets tangled in the blankets, and loses his temper entirely. Kicks them off himself and then off the bed, then rips out the IV again, yanking the tubing hard enough to send the pole crashing to the floor. He catches the foot of it as it upends and _throws_. It's not a particularly strong throw, considering, but it sends the thing clattering halfway across the room, tossing the bag loose and sending it sliding under the dresser.

He follows _that_ by flipping the chair, scattering dishes, the uneaten half of sandwich and Natasha's book. The drop isn't far enough to utterly shatter anything, but the handle cracks neatly off the coffee mug, and the travel cup of water--easy to open and close and tip proof, the consideration for Clint's injured limbs and sometimes unsteady grip as painful as an insult--rolls, slowly spilling all over the place.

Natasha's book is getting waterlogged as the puddle grows, and Bruce scoops it up while Clint casts about for something else to destroy, then hurls the pillows, yanks down the curtains and manages in a tangled sort of way try to toss those across the room, too. They're too big for it to really work, and the fabric ends up in a messy twist across the end of the bed, the rest of it on the floor and soaking up the puddle.

And then, when there's nothing else he can reach that isn't as good as bolted down, Clint just drops his head into his hands and sits there, silent, shoulders rising and falling too fast as he pants for breath, the sound harsh in the sudden silence.

Bruce isn't sure what to do, because Clint's been cranky and a pain in the ass, but not really violent in any way at all, unless he was having, as Tony put it, a _freak out_ , flashing back, not knowing where he was. This--this is a tantrum. 

Of sorts, Bruce amends, because _tantrum_ might be too uncharitable, under the circumstances. He lets the mess stay on the floor and rights the chair. Perches on the edge of it, waiting for Clint to get a grip or calm down, or whatever it is he needs to do to come back to equilibrium.

Clint doesn't. Just stays there, still except for his breathing and Bruce wants to lay a comforting hand on his shoulder, but he's pretty sure that it would be a terrible idea. 

Eventually, Clint starts to sag, sideways and against the wall. His shoulder presses against the edge of the window frame in a way that looks really painful, but he doesn't even seem to notice. Bruce lets the silence drag on for a while longer, then settles in as best he can in the uncomfortable chair. Says, "Clint. I'm right here, and I'm going to stay here until you're ready, okay?" 

Clint doesn't answer, so he picks up Natasha's book, shakes off what water he can from it, and wipes it on his shirt, blotting the worst of the water off the pages, then starts reading softly, in case Clint needs it to know someone's there.

\-----

"Sorry," Clint says after a while. He knows Steve's there. Heard him come in and join Bruce. Felt the bed dip as he took a seat, then move again when he got back up. He doesn't look at them. Stays where he is, leaning against the edge of the window, even though the corner of the frame is digging into his injured shoulder. The sun is warm on his face, the light totally different than the technologically un-harsh indoor lighting all through the tower. He can hear Steve picking up his mess and feels distantly ashamed of himself.

More than that, he feels tired and cold. He's been cold _forever_. Distantly, he thinks Bruce is probably going to kill him because this is so much worse than ripping out the IV. Than refusing to cooperate with bandage changes or with Bruce poking at his ribs and shoulder. Trashing things like Tony on a bender.

The hearing aids Tony's made are beautiful. Even considering Tony's scorn for his courtesy-of-SHIELD implants, the sound is clear and rich, unlike the old spares Natasha had dug out of his drawer. He can't remember if the world sounded like this before the extended silence of his capture, or if he's just sensitized to it now. He doesn't know if he's ever noticed the dark, wry tones in Bruce's voice before, or the way Steve sounds younger when he's worried. When they stop talking, his room is quiet. 

Clint doesn't mind it. 

Even though he hadn't been able to hear in the warehouse, his memory is full of sounds. Laughter, the click of the lock. Fuck. The _feel_ of the lock, cold and heavy, the bolt sliding home under his own fingers. Every noise _now_ gets added to the memory. A belated sound track. He hears Steve chuckle, Tony do his ironic ha-ha-hah and suddenly his nightmares are filled with chuckling laughter, mocking and sarcastic instead of the hum of vibration he _knows_ was the reality.

But Bruce reading is just steady white noise, the words blurring together into a comfortable, meaningless rise-and-fall. He lets his eyes slide shut, then jerks awake as his brain misinterprets the slide into darkness. 

"I wouldn't be such an asshole if I was less tired," he tells Bruce, in apology. 

Bruce pauses and then keeps reading.

\----

Steve watches Clint drift, then twitch awake repeatedly. He'd pat his back or shoulder or something, but the images from the recording are fresh again in his mind. The last thing he wants to do is alarm Clint when he's already clearly in a strange state. 

Bruce is reading him a story--something that's probably Natasha's, judging by its topic and cover--but Clint isn't listening. His fingers play at the edge of the tape still stuck to his wrist, peeling it up and tacking it back down repeatedly in a steady, repeating rhythm. Steve doesn't know what to make of it. 

Then the strip stops sticking, clinging by one end, and Clint frowns. Sighs.

Steve says, "Clint?"

"Cap."

Clint's there, is what's weird. There, but also far away and inside himself. He looks over at Bruce, for the first time since Steve's come in, then back at his hands. Steve reaches to pull the tape off him and it comes loose with a soft sound, almost like tearing. Clint blinks at it, but that's all. He says, "M'really tired, Cap."

"I know," Steve says, balling the tape up between his fingers. The IV pole is back in its position, standing near the head of the bed, and Clint follows his gaze when he glances at it and hunches a bit.

"Sorry," he says again, and god. Clint has a _right_ to lash out, if he wants to.

Steve says, "Just thinking if we need to put that back in, if you hate it." He shrugs, dismissing it so Clint will, too. "You want help lying down?"

"I can do it," Clint says, but doesn't move. Which probably means he's hurting, and Steve would help him, but he can't figure out how to touch him, _damn_ Tony and Thor.

"Alright. When you're ready. If you change your mind--" he lets it hang and Clint nods, but he doesn't move, either.

\-----

Somehow, it's worse to look at Clint now than when they'd first pulled him from the warehouse. He's healing, and stronger, but with all the fight suddenly gone out of him and Tony would give a lot to see him attempt to take Steve out for hovering, instead of giving in to his fussing with this new passivity.

"I should have tried a different tape," Bruce says, frowning across the empty kitchen table. He looks a bit like he doesn't know what to do with himself, angry at nothing in particular. "Or at least switched it when he _started_ complaining about it bothering him."

Tony snorts scornfully at him. "Jesus, Bruce. Clint's fucking glue allergy isn't the reason he's snapped." Clint's been spiraling to this since they'd found him, all the stubborn denial in the world not enough to carry him through. Tony's not surprised at all that that tactic hadn't worked, but he bets Clint is. Or would be, if he was in any shape to think about it.

"He hasn't _snapped_ , Tony," Steve says, but he doesn't sound so much like he's offended that Tony's said it as he does scared that it's true. Tony can imagine scenarios where the sort of torture Clint had been through would destroy someone much easier than he can scenarios where they come out whole again.

He takes a breath and lets it out and lets himself think of the one place none of them had dared go--Permanent psychological damage. 

Except, that's not Clint. At least, not if Clint has any say in it. Tony doesn't believe in the power of determination in overcoming adversity, or at least, not this kind of adversity, because he's been pretty determined to get over lots of stuff and most of the time that still ends up with him drunk, but he does believe in the power of stubborn perseverance and Clint's got _that_ in spades.

Somewhere in there, anyway.

"He was fighting when we found him," Tony points out, even though it contradicts his seconds-ago _Clint's snapped_ stance. He points at Bruce. "You. Call medical. Sound doctor-y," and snaps his fingers when Bruce doesn't jump to it.

"They'll take him," Bruce warns, with all the paranoia of years on the lam. Tony looks at him.

"They'll have to go through you and Captain America and a god," he points out. Plus they've been keeping medical appraised, and haven't had any unsolicited interference yet, so he's pretty sure that what Bruce means is, _because maybe he needs a doctor, but he'll just end up in psych_.

It's possible, Tony thinks, that psych is exactly where Clint should be, at this point, but the idea still horrifies him, though maybe not as much as it does Bruce who has experience with disappearing into the bowels of organizations. 

Steve, who's just been listening, says, "Go talk to Clint, first."

"What? On the off-chance he's just snapped out of it?" Tony asks, getting up. It's stupid, but he wouldn't complain if it happened.

\-----

It hasn't. Tony takes a seat on the uncomfortable chair and props his feet on Clint's mattress, because that at least helps with the damn thing's awkward height. It does press his back into the pokey carved backrest though, and after shifting around for a bit he says, "Seriously, Barton, why do you have this thing?"

Clint's still maintaining that unsettling quiet, but he at least looks over and there's a flicker in his face that's maybe irritation. Tony gives him a smile that he hopes is apologetic, even if the regret isn't exactly sincere. Clint can have all the horrible furniture in the world, if he wants. It's certainly his right.

"Listen. Clint," Tony starts, then doesn't continue. Clint's not really in any shape to make decisions, but he's not in any shape to have decisions made _for_ him, either. "Are you alright?" he asks finally, and feels less stupid about it this time. There's really no other way to phrase it, and it's not like he means it in the obvious way. More in the _are you still in there_ way. Or maybe in the _are you coming back_ way.

"M'fine," Clint says, without pausing to think. On automatic response. Tony looks at him, then sighs. He watches Clint watch nothing, lying on his side now, with his head pillowed on one folded arm, then reaches to pull the blanket over him a little more and lets his breath out in a huff. It sounds like a laugh, but it really isn't one. The fear he has for Clint now is entirely different than he'd had when he'd been frantically trying to tap into outdated security systems.

\-----

Tony tugs the blanket closer, but the spike of alarm is muted. Clint's breath barely changes, and then Tony is leaning away again, and the blanket's only pulled as far up as his shoulders, still draped loosely and not restraining in any way. His life's become constant threat assessment, a repeating pattern of sudden fear and sick relief, a cycle of forgetting and remembering where he is, and he's just too tired to do anything about it.

At least Tony's talking and he can close his eyes and instantly recognize the presence beside the bed when he drifts and starts awake. He can't stay asleep for long, now that he's over the initial helpless fatigue, too used to having any rest brutally interrupted and still, somewhere, anxious for what's coming next. He hears himself whimper as he comes awake again, and hears Tony shift, but there's no touch.

"Easy, Clint," he says, "you're okay. It's just me."

Clint says, "Tony," so Tony will know he recognizes him. That he's not in danger of being on the receiving end of another of Clint's fits, but Tony doesn't really get what he means. 

"Yeah. I'm here," Tony says, thinking he's being summoned. Clint hums acknowledgement and reaches a little, then stops. His hand is under the blanket, and the pull of the fabric is--not alarming, but like it could be if he keeps going and it doesn't give.

"It was Thor's cape," Tony says, and now there is a touch as he untucks Clint's hands from the folds of the blanket, folding the material towards Clint so he won't tangle his limbs in them, "You were already okay. We already had you."

He barely remembers what Tony's talking about, but it comes back. The sudden, total restraint, the vibration of a voice against his cheek. He shudders hard, then thinks _Thor_ and tries to see it from outside himself. To picture not the dark and the way his whole body hurt when it was shifted, but Thor, careful and steady and not hurting him back when he manages to land a strike.

It helps, for a few seconds, but then he remembers the fear. The way he'd thought that it was the beginning of something new, and worse. His breath stutters, and then Tony's carefully rubbing his shoulder.

"I shouldn't have mentioned it," he says, the apology gentle and un-Tony-like. "If you want the blanket off, I'll get it for you. JARVIS can warm the room and Steve can sit here and sweat." The weight of it pulls away, and Clint sighs a bit. Drifts, after a while, and jerks awake when the chair scrapes as Tony moves.

"Still the same?" Someone asks, and it's Steve. Clint mumbles his name, for the same reason he had Tony's, and hears Steve say his back, a gentleness to it that should offend him, but doesn't. 

"Yeah," Tony says, "You and Natasha are going to have to make this call for him, Cap. He's--" Clint opens his eyes when Tony trails off, and Steve smiles a little. It looks forced and Clint wonders if it's because they've been called out. If they've needed his eyes up top and not had them. 

"Be back in no time, Cap," he promises, but it makes Steve look even more unhappy.


	7. Chapter 7

It's surprising, but maybe it shouldn't be, Steve thinks, that it's Thor who gets through to Clint, catching him when he comes up thrashing from one of those short naps. Barely dozing, but still out enough for nightmares. 

Thor does it out of reflex, probably, but after he's got Clint he doesn't let go, shifting to sit next to him and drawing him close, carefully bringing him to lean against Thor's shoulder when he goes quiet again. 

"Careful," Thor says, low, almost a murmur, "Do not injure yourself further," and rubs Clint's back. Steve sees him flinch and almost wants to warn Thor to watch out, but Clint's still so on edge about having attacked Tony that Steve knows it would cut. It's not like Thor can't handle Clint, especially in the condition he's in, even if he's taken by surprise.  
Clint sighs and looks down at his hands. "M'fine," he murmurs in the same automatic tone from earlier, and pulls away a little, but it's token. Thor keeps him where he is, and after a while Clint drifts off again, waking only to glance around occasionally and going back to sleep almost as soon as his eyes spark with bleary recognition. 

He looks comfortable and relaxed for the first time in a long while and Steve's not sure what's changed until he notices the rhythmic way Thor's stroking his back, not rough, but not really gentle either. His big hand makes a soft thump sound every time he lifts it and drops it again.

They'd been so focused on the senses Clint _hadn't_ had, that they'd forgotten about the one _did_. Clint had been _alone_ , with no input other than touch and even though Steve had admonished Tony and Thor for the thought, they _had_ been--not so much avoiding touching Clint as being tentative, afraid of hurting or upsetting him, keeping contact brief, and light. A pat, maybe. Maybe an assisting grip if it looked like Clint needed the help. Steve should have noticed that the only time Clint had really been sleeping well had been when Natasha sat alongside him, providing a grounding constant.

But Clint also been aggressively rebuffing the rest of them, chasing Bruce to arm's length and worrying Thor. Scaring Tony. Now, though, Clint looks beyond offended pride, leaning almost limp against Thor, shivering from something other than fever, his hand twisted in the fabric of Thor's shirt. "I have you, brother," Thor tells him, when he twitches awake, and the fact that he's giving Clint comfort instead of scaring the sense out of him is probably doing a world of good for Thor, too.

Clint raises a hand like he's reaching for something at the back of his neck, but never makes contact. His hand hovers uncertainly until Thor takes his wrist and pulls his hand back down. "It is gone," Thor says, softly, and Clint blinks and looks up and actually focuses on Thor's face. 

"Yeah. Yeah, I know." It's the most _responsive_ response they've gotten out of him since he'd trashed the room. Or the parts of the room in his immediate reach, anyway. Steve leans back a bit in the uncomfortable chair, then changes his mind and leans forward again.

He's so relieved he feels almost light headed.

\-----

Clint's pattern seems to be one step back, two steps forward, because the next day he shows up in the kitchen, wobbly and threading his way carefully from handhold to handhold a little bit like he's on a rocking boat. 

Bruce watches him for a minute then asks, "Need a hand?"

"No, I don't need a fucking hand. I--Just kick over a chair or something." Clint's leaning against the wall, breathing like he's done more physical exertion than just walked down the hall. He seems to realize what Bruce is thinking, because he scowls and adds, "It's a pretty long hall, okay?"

"Okay," Bruce says, but instead of pushing a chair to him comes over and gets Clint, putting an arm around him to take his weight, helping him hobble to the table and keeping him from just collapsing in a slump into the seat. "How are you doing?"

Clint ignores it. "This kitchen hasn't changed at all," he observes, like he's moved away years ago and is visiting. He sounds almost disapproving, and Bruce smiles.

"Other than that we don't have dishes anymore," he says, and nods at the over-filled sink, stacked with dishes. 

"It's Tony's turn." 

Tony takes so few of his _actual_ turns, that it's pretty much always a safe bet. Bruce smiles at the guess. "If you're hungry," he says, "I'll make him wash you a plate. Maybe even some silverware." Clint still looks pale and tired. Thinner even than when they'd first got him back and Bruce gives him a steady, meaningful look, holding it until Clint frowns and nods.

He doesn't bother trying to wrangle Tony into the kitchen, though. Just heats up leftovers from the fridge and sets the whole pan down in front of Clint, on top of an oven mitt to keep the heat from damaging the table, and quickly washes a fork to hand to him. 

"The service in this establishment remains spectacular," Clint comments, sounding like himself as he considers the presentation. Bruce shrugs, but it's good to hear Clint crab, for once.

"Don't forget to tip," he says, and Clint snorts and pokes at a piece of potato. "And don't burn yourself on the pan." Because that's what Clint needs, with his wrist slathered in greasy anti-histamine cream and on top of everything else. Bruce isn't fooling himself--as steady as Clint seems now, again, it's precarious. There's no telling what tiny thing might be enough to tip him back over into break down.

Clint gives him an offended look. He's still stirring the potatoes around.

"Eat," Bruce says, "Your arm okay?"

"I think I can manage a fork, Bruce." Clint stabs like he's proving the point, but doesn't bring the skewered food to his mouth. Says, "You were going to call in psych. Or medical, anyway. I heard Tony and Steve." 

They'd known Clint wasn't entirely out of it. They should have been more careful. "Clint--"

"You should," he says, looking intently at the contents of the pan, "I don't. You shouldn't have to deal with this."

 _Clint_ shouldn't have to deal with it. Bruce watches the misery play across his face, before being fiercely banished again, then says, gently, "Only if you want to, Clint. It was just an option." _We had no fucking clue what to do_ , he doesn't say.

"Steve and Nat--"

Bruce was going to _kill_ Tony. And Steve. "Team leader and your friend. It seemed--"

"No. It was." Clint smiles, only a little strained, "If you need to make a call for me, they're a good choice." He lifts the fork and takes a bite, finally, then another, then puts the fork back down and slumps a little, exhausted. "Not really that hungry, Bruce. Could you help me back to my room?"

\-----

"Clint says it's fine if Steve and Natasha want to have him committed," Bruce says, "I think that's what he meant, anyway. He wasn't really all that clear. What the _fuck_ did you guys talk about in there? You _knew_ he was listening."

Tony at least has the decency to wince. "He was out of it," he says, defending himself anyway, but his voice sounds guilty.

"Yeah, well. Apparently not _that_ out of it." 

"What did he say?" Steve looks pained, probably torturing himself over the slip-up, even though Bruce is pretty sure now that it was Tony doing the talking. 

"That we shouldn't have to deal with him and that if we want to call in psych he's fine with you and Natasha making the call." It's a pretty big leap to _committed_. Bruce wouldn't have thought he had that kind of tendency to the dramatic, but there it was.

Natasha snorts, but her tone is gentle, "It's _fine_ , Bruce. He's tired. _You're_ tired. Don't let Clint make you crazy." She's right. Clint's dealing with a lot and they should be there for him to lean on, except. Except Bruce was doing a _shit_ job of making him better, and maybe they _should_ have taken him directly to medical, terror and disorientation and lack of senses be damned. 

On the other hand, SHIELD _losing_ Clint and then failing to notify the team was a little harder to get past. Made it a more than a little difficult to turn him over to them and trust they'd do right by him.

\-----

Steve leaves Bruce to make sure Clint's okay, bringing Clint's nearly untouched lunch along with him, but on a plate now. Clint grins at the sight of it.

"Put Tony to work?" he asks.

"Natasha volunteered." He sets the plate down, again on that chair. Clint catches him looking at it and grins. 

"You guys don't have to sit in it, you know," he says, "You could drag something in from somewhere. Tony has chairs." That was true, but in Clint's somehow spartan clutter--little furniture, but the surfaces of what there is strewn with a meaningless mish-mash of things, junk, mostly, with a few personal items cast in the mix--bringing other furniture in would have upset things. Overpowered what was there, maybe, when the whole point of moving Clint to his own space was that it would be familiar and _his_.

On the other hand, his chair really _is_ awful. "Any preference? Something that matches your bow, maybe?" Clint smiles at the joke, and twists around a bit to pick at the food. Steve pretends to not be taking note of that because Bruce will be relieved to hear Clint's eating, even if it's with absent disinterest, but Clint won't like that they're monitoring him, or reporting their observations on him to each other.

Then Clint looks up and grins. He looks like he's scheming and enjoying it, and even the shadows under his eyes and his obvious fatigue can't spoil it. Steve grins back. 

"Oh, god," Clint says, "This is my chance to make a move for that," he gestures with his fork, "that nap chair. The brown one."

It's as ugly as Clint's chair is uncomfortable, overstuffed and huge, and Clint and Tony dispute the occupancy of it whenever missions leave the team sore enough to want comfort, but also company, too wired to retreat to their own rooms to rest. "I think that one had better stay where it is," Steve says, "or I'll have a mutiny on my hands. But I can probably get you anything else. I doubt Tony will notice." 

Clint lets the discussion go, shrugging a little as he stabs at the plate, loading his fork. "I'm sorry I scared you," he says.

"Whatever Bruce--"

"He didn't," Clint interrupts, and offers Steve a smile, more watery than before but not a put-on either, "Bruce didn't say anything. He just--He looked kind of freaked out." Clint's a master of understatement when it's about things pertaining to himself, so Steve figures Bruce had probably looked a bit more upset than _kind of_.

He decides to leave it alone, saying, "I'm sorry if you thought we were going to give you up. We should have--"

"It's fine." Clint's still chasing potatoes around the plate, and Steve wonders if he's ever going to actually take a bite, but instead Clint puts the fork down again and sits back a bit, cross legged in the blankets. "I lost my hearing really early on. With SHIELD," he says, unbidden and unexpected, "It was my fault. I was." He stops to look down at his hands, like he's remembering what he'd been doing, or holding or using at the time. "I was stupid. But it was still on SHIELD business, and I was still a good shot, so they took care of it." _Of me_ , Steve hears, but doesn't interrupt. 

"I didn't want to keep reminding everyone of what a fuck up I was," Clint goes on, and one of his shoulders twitches in an aborted shrug, "and how I'd fucked myself up _being_ a fuck up. So I didn't talk about it. It wasn't. I wasn't keeping it a secret, really. I just--"

"You got used to keeping it to yourself," Steve finishes for him, "That's what you told Tony?" He knows how that is, a little. He'd got used to keeping secrets, too, that had become private, personal things by accident. By having kept quiet for too long.

"Yeah," Clint says, and then, "I trust this team, Cap."

"Clint, nobody ever doubted--"

"No. I mean, I trust your decisions. I'm sorry I didn't give you the information you needed to make them before, but I trust you. You and Nat want medical, it's fine. I don't know what to do about me, either." 

Clint says that last a little helplessly, and it makes Steve wish he had answers or at least a medical degree, so maybe he could _find_ some answers. He says, "Eat, Clint. I'm going to go get you that chair."

\-----

The addition of a comfortable armchair means that Tony lounges around in his room a lot more, crabbing about unauthorized redecoration and how he's not going to stand between Pepper and Steve when she hears of it. Clint listens to him grouse and doesn't point out that _they're_ the ones who are being picky about the seating options. Or that he doubts Pepper cares.

"Your problem," Tony announces, after he's wound to a temporary halt and spent some time watching Clint stir his lunch around some more, "is that you need a project," and even though he knows Clint's wearing the hearing aids he built, he stops talking and waves his hands around like a jerk.

It's easier to ignore, Clint has to admit, he can just not look at Tony, and that's at least an improvement on the monologues. 

"No? Really Barton? You're deaf and you never bothered to learn sign language?" 

There wasn't really any reason to, when hardly anyone knew he couldn't hear. It's not like there would have been anyone to talk to in sign. "And you what? Brushed up on it last night?"

"Nah. Over the last week," Tony says modestly, and it makes Clint kind of want to kill him.

"I speak Russian," he offers as a counter, even though Nat calls it sorta-kinda-Amerussian. 

"Yeah? Give me another week," Tony says, and slouches smugly in Clint's new chair, one leg hooked over the armrest, the other foot propped on the edge of Clint's bed. He looks so fucking at ease that Clint's got half a mind to get Steve to remove the chair again, just so he won't have to watch anyone look that comfortable. 

"Come on," Tony says, and straightens just enough to snatch Clint's fork out of his hand and drop it to the plate, "you're not even eating that. Here. This is _A_." Tony makes the letter sign, and Clint may not have bothered to really learn sign language, but it's not like's never realized he _should_. It's not like he's never had an _interest_.

"Fuck you, Tony, you patronizing ass. I know the alphabet."

Tony is unfazed. "Great. Then we can get right to the important stuff. This is _Tony_."

Clint rolls his eyes. Signs _Fuck off_ , because he's made sure to learn what he thought might be relevant.

Tony grins. "Progress," he declares, and signs the word at Clint with careful emphasis. 

"Jackass," Clint says, and signs _that_ before reaching to pick his fork back up. Eats a few bites so Tony will shut the hell up for a minute.

Tony does, smirking indulgently, like he's aware that Clint's just cramming food into his mouth as a cover, and fiddles around for a bit before starting back up again.

He's exhausting. More so than usual, and Clint's brain is getting foggy. He can't keep up with their usual back and forth and stops Tony's insistent signing with a hand on his wrist--he'd throw the fork at him, but missing at this range would be embarrassing--and pushes his hand down. "Just talk," he says, and it comes out so tired that he'd follow it up with something snippy, but nothing comes to mind.

"Whoa there, Barton," Tony says, in a similar tone to the one Steve uses when he thinks Clint is starting to look kind of deranged--gentle and cautious, volume turned low.

" _Tony_ ," Clint complains and then doesn't follow that up either. Tony frowns, all his obnoxious energy washing out of him to be replaced by a worried frown. It's sort of weird to see him deflate.

"What's wrong? You okay? Remember our deal about not getting me in Cap's bad boy books?"

"Nothing's wrong. It's just." It's just that signing would be useful, now that the team's aware of his potential communication problem, but Tony being quiet while he did it was too much. Tony _talking_ while he did it was too much. 

"Overloading your brain? We can stop," Tony offers, and Clint would call him an arrogant jackass, but his brain _is_ overloading. Or maybe shorting out. He nods a little, and Tony swings his leg off the armrest to sit up.

"Clint?"

Tony's leaning over him. Clint waits for it to feel threatening, but it never happens. The light from the arc reactor is close by his face, a wash of familiar blue showing through Tony's shirt and Clint is touching it before he knows he's going to do it, then flinches, but mostly in sympathy, because he expects Tony to.

Tony doesn't.

Clint lets his hand fall away and Tony says, "Hey. Hey, don't zone out again," and he sounds anxious enough that Clint musters the energy to focus. He hadn't even realized he'd been starting to drift.

"I'm not, Tony." He nods at Tony's chest, indicating the arc reactor. "I was really happy to see you."

Tony doesn't make a sight joke, which is more than Clint would usually hope for. He just sits on the edge of the bed and says, "Yeah. We were really happy to see you too, Barton."

\-----

Clint gets steadier, which means they're all more comfortable with letting SHIELD make a house call. It also means that a forced visit to psych is no longer a risk, but Bruce hovers with an air of threat about him that Steve would more likely associate with Natasha, grim faced and sharp eyed. Even though Clint balks a few times getting undressed, the sight of Bruce's expression gets a smile and a head shake out of him every time he glances over.

It only lasts for as long as the check-up, and then Clint's mood goes as sour and as dark as Bruce's had been before it. 

"They took my socks," Clint says with an irritated mournful tone that for a second--combined with the nonsensicalness of the statement--makes Steve worry. Clint has his hands tangled in a t-shirt, bunching it up to get it over his head easier, and Steve would help him, but Clint getting stronger also means Clint getting snippier and more guarded about his personal space.

Except with Thor, or sometimes with Bruce, though Steve suspects for different reasons. Sometimes, he's okay with Tony, or extra annoyed by Tony, with no discernable reason for either. It seems a random thing. 

"You," Bruce tells him, reading off the notes they've been left and ignoring the comment about the socks, "aren't eating enough, aren't drinking enough, and need to start getting back on your feet."

"Fuck it," Clint says, like it's a reflex. He sounds pre-emptively exhausted by the thought and Steve pats his arm, then second guesses the gesture, and _then_ figures he's committed the sin anyway, and leaves his hand there, resting lightly.

"No shooting," Bruce continues, "Just try some walking for now. Work your way up to it."

"You told me to stay still," Clint grouses, and they probably had, at some point, but Clint's arguing for the hell of it. Steve can't tell if he's coming back to center, or starting another slow spin away from himself, but then Clint raises his arms to pull the shirt over his head and curses.

Steve helps tug it down, and says, "Arms okay?"

"Yeah, they're fucking fine." Clint looks ruffled, and it's hard to tell by what, exactly. Upset by medical, maybe, or by their hovering, or his continued need of assistance, or by the prospect of starting the slow climb back to fighting condition, regaining strength and re-honing his skills. Maybe upset by the brief moment the shirt gets stuck around his head before he can tug it the rest of the way on. It's all equally likely. 

"Clint?"

"I'm _fine_. Seriously. Can I take a breath around here without you guys jumping down my--" Clint stops. Actually _takes_ a breath, and as much as Steve wants to, he doesn't question it or make any move to steady or comfort him. Just waits to see what Clint's going to do. 

Which turns out to be nothing. He sits there quietly for a while, then looks at Steve and says, "So, hey. I got a shirt on," and shrugs like it's a big achievement that he's trying to be modest about.

Steve's not sure what to say to that, so he just pats Clint's arm again.


	8. Chapter 8

Clint's halfway through a fourth circuit of the hallway--tracing the route from living room to kitchen and back, with all the concentrated intensity Steve's used to seeing him employ on the range, placing one foot carefully in front of the other, focused and sharp-eyed like he's navigating terrain more treacherous than the transition from carpet to hardwood to tile. He's starting to slow down and Steve's tempted to tell him to stop. That it's enough. Except Clint's mind is at least on something now, other than being uncomfortable or in pain or remembering what had been done to him. He has something to push his body towards, which seems as meditative for him as breathing exercises are for Bruce. 

Clint pauses and Steve starts to tell him to take a break, starting to tentatively form the first syllable of Clint's name, when Clint goes down. Just kind of slides to the floor and hunches his shoulders in what's clearly a defensive posture. 

"Shit," someone says, just as Steve finishes saying "Clint," still in a friendly tone, still like he's about to suggest _maybe you should take a break for now_.

He gets there before Bruce, but not before whatever's happened has passed Clint slams his fist angrily into the wall, cursing, and Steve slides to his knees just in time to grab his wrist to stop him doing it again.

\----

"There wasn't anything," Clint says, too fast, too breathy, so _angry_ he can feel it like a hum in head. "Nothing _happened_. The first time. The time with the. With Tony. It was the. I couldn't _see_." He knows he sounds hysterical, but he can't stop, "And then in the lab, I--I _get_ that." 

Steve says, "Okay," In a very calm way that just pisses Clint off more. He can tell by Steve's tone that he's probably coming off like a man on the brink, frantic and hyperventilating and maybe not making any sense, but he can't stop himself from plowing on.

"But there. Nothing was. It was just." He can't seem to finish a sentence. He can barely seem to start them. The frustration bubbles into rage, and when he notices his hands shaking from it, he grinds his teeth together. Keeping the flood of broken-up sentence beginnings from flooding out in some kind of deranged babble.

The others probably mistake the tremor for returning fever, or chills from his sweat-soaked shirt, because someone hands Steve a blanket, which he holds it up to show Clint, "I'm going to put this around you, okay?"

Clint manages to nod jerkily. Steve unfolds the blanket slowly, with exaggerated movements, and Clint would be even more pissed and insulted if he wasn't also kind of freaking out. Creating associations the way he had with the re-introduction of sound, as if he had been able to see and recognize Thor's cape. He watches it way too intently, following Steve's hands with what's probably freakish concentration as he reaches out to drape it lightly over his shoulders.

"You're fine," Steve tells him, "It's alright."

"I _know_ I'm fine," Clint snaps, and scrubs a hand over his face in frustration. He wants to hit the wall against, but the first time had already jarred his elbow. He knows Bruce is going to have opinions on it. Probably already has them, looking all serious over his glasses and frowning.

"Tony and his stupid _projects_ ," Clint spits, even though he's not sure Bruce or Steve know what he's talking about, "and this--this _goddamn_. _Fucking_." He's not even sure why he's angry at Tony, or at the exercise he'd overdone on his own imperative. He's not even really sure what he's angry _at_ , only that he's about to burst with it. He can hear his breathing picking up into what feels like panic-attack gasps, except that he's pretty sure that that's not where this is going. If he could reach anything that's not Steve or Bruce, he--

Steve pops him one. Not hard, but enough to shock him into silence. 

"Jesus, Steve," Bruce says, and Steve looks a bit surprised at himself, but not particularly regretful. Clint blinks at him.

"Are you okay?" Steve asks, sounding calm and even-keeled. Like he's starting any regular conversation. Clint's not sure if he means _Are you done losing it?_ or _Did I re-concuss you?_ Maybe _Have I knocked loose the last of your sanity?_

Clint's not sure, for a second, and has to take inventory before he can say for certain that nothing particularly hurts, and that he knows where he is and is even mostly back on the level. He doesn't say so. Just shrugs the blanket off and tells Steve, "Not really so good with the--the." He nods sideways at it, and Steve says. 

"Right. Sorry."

Some kind of dark guilty look plays across Steve's face and goddamn it. He keeps having the same conversation with all of them, over and over. "I'm good, Steve. I'm fine. Thanks for--" he gestures. _Thanks for hitting me in the face_ , seems weird. "For the help."

Bruce asks, "Want to get up?" and he really doesn't. Now that he's been off them for a few minutes, his legs hurt from the exertion. He can tell they'll shake with the effort.

"Yeah," he says. "Sure," and really doesn't want to be so relieved when Steve pulls him up and puts an arm around him to take his weight.

\-----

Thor makes himself into a constant presence. Not constantly touching now, which is good because Clint thinks that would probably drive him crazy, but forever giving him careful pats when he passes by Clint's scheduled hobbling up and down the hall or dropping a touch on his arm when he wants something passed, now that Clint's up and about and eating in the kitchen like a real person again.

Clint uses his Bruce-enforced breaks to teach Thor signs. He's picking up more and more from Tony's insistent tutoring and Thor seems hungry for some kind of response, but Clint's not sure what to say to him. _Thanks for getting me_ , seems like it would just make Thor weird and quiet again, and trying to explain that he understands why they'd restrained him seems like it would be worse, and awkward. Especially since he can't even think of it without having to still a little shiver.

So instead he teaches Thor some useful basics like _duck_ and _retreat_ and _be careful_ and _screw you, Stark_ , and lets Thor sit with him when he naps on the couch or help him when he limps down to the gym with Steve to start regaining the range of motion in his arms. To build up his strength.

The first time he tries to draw his bow is a disaster. Or rather, a quiet failure when the draw is too heavy and he has to relax and lower the bow. Thor frowns and says "Do not be disheartened. The next try--"

But Steve cuts in and says, "There's no next try. Not today," and sends him to do something light weight and seated and Clint still ends up exhausted and soaked in sweat and dizzy with fatigue before Steve puts an end to that, too. Policing his damn life, based on one dramatic hallway collapse. 

It's not the most encouraging thing, but the workout makes him feel better. Easy in his chest and clear eyed in a way he hadn't known he'd been missing. He knows it won't last, but it's something, for now, and he grins at Nat when she takes a break from her own workout to come over and pretend to _not_ be looking him over out of the corner of her eye. 

"I'm _fine_ ," he says, and, since, face-planting right after insisting on that would probably not do much for his already shaky credibility, stops what he's doing--which is mostly just stretches at this point--and goes to exchange his soaked t-shirt for a tank top and sweatshirt to avoid cooling down too fast. 

Clothing is amazing. 

Nat catches his grin and shakes her head, and Clint would say something smart and snippy, but he's not in the mood to. Instead he jams his hands into his sweatshirt pockets--secretly taking pressure off his shoulder--and says, "Fashion choices weren't something I thought I'd ever miss. It just seems like a Tony thing." 

There's a joke about hats in there, or at least head-wear, but Clint doesn't think anyone's going to make it. He might have had his brains knocked a bit loose, but the team's been on tenderhooks about it, probably the whole time. He hadn't been in any shape to really process more than the most obvious symptoms--Thor's quiet distress and Tony's obsession with fixing his lack of communication options, Bruce's more-apparent-than-usual anger and the weird tone to Steve's un-Captain-ish patience. He's been putting up with Clint's short fuse a lot more than usual. 

Than _before_. 

In return, Clint's been trying to keep his lunatic outbursts to a minimum, but his success rate isn't entirely spectacular and Steve's still giving him that now-familiar cautious, measuring look when he thinks Clint isn't looking. It's starting to get a little ridiculous, because he's _better_. 

He's _much_ better, and it's not like none of them have ever needed rescue from less than ideal capture situations before, and he doesn't think they'd ever been this weird about it then. Unless he'd just missed it because _he'd_ been busy being weird right along with them. 

Times they'd had to spring Bruce come to mind. 

Clint scratches at his neck, then stops when not only does Natasha glance at him--subtle, and without even turning her head, but more than enough for him to notice--but Steve does, too. Without even pausing in his work out. 

"You have your eye on me the whole time there, Cap?" he asks and tries to go for irritable, but really he just feels tired. Maybe sounds it, too, because Steve doesn't look bothered by it. Doesn't even look bothered by Clint's querulous tone, and the passivity is actually not as great a feature of New Patient Steve than Clint would have guessed, if he'd been pitched the concept. 

"Might have been," Steve allows, and Clint snorts and without thinking tugs the hood of his sweatshirt up, meaning to hide his expressions from Steve's scrutiny, then quickly shoves it down again when the edge of it cuts into his sight, narrowing his field of vision. Damn.

Steve tactfully doesn't mention it, and turns his attention back to his weights as if Clint hadn't just given away far too much by accident. 

Or at least he seems to. Clint eyes him suspiciously, trying to gauge just how good he is at watching-while-not-watching. "He's turning into you," he tells Natasha, accusingly, then grins when she bops him with a boxing glove. Lighter than she might have before, but at least she'd _done it_.

Clint grins back at her as he drops onto one of the benches along one wall--hoping it comes off casual rather than _exhausted flop_ \--then leans back and lets his head thump against the wall. There's no Bruce to glare at him for it, but he regrets it a bit anyway. Mostly, the headaches are gone and the dizziness only mild when it decides to kick up, which is only sporadically lately, but even mild and sporadic means embarrassing losses of balance that he'd rather not trigger if he can help it. 

He blames the occasional sideways stagger on Tony's _fucking_ carpets sliding or being rucked up or whatever damn thing that would never have effected him before. It's probably more telling than just admitting to the odd moment of wooziness. 

"You're done," Cap tells him when it starts to get obvious that Clint hasn't just paused to catch his breath before making his exit. That he intends to stay. "Why don't you hit the shower?"

"Tossing me out of training?" Clint asks, but can't get too much heat into that, either. "That's a new one."

"Not really," Steve smirks, and okay. There's been times he's been booted for being disruptive or giving Cap more grief than he was in a mood to deal with, but none of those expulsions had been quite as gentle as this one.

"Something's weird about you guys," Clint says, grabbing his stuff and getting to his feet--with a slight bobble as his head swims for a second. He'd almost grab for the wall, but he's still aware that Natasha's watching him. That Steve's measuring his performance--or lack of. 

"Next time I'm shooting," he tells Steve, just to make the stand. Just because all the watching him and organizing him and telling him what he can and can't do is getting more than a little old. It's been old for a while.

Steve doesn't seem to take his declaration seriously. He says, "We'll see," and Clint doesn't-- _decidedly_ doesn't--make a rude gesture as he heads out.

\-----

Clint comes back to hang in the lab, like before he'd developed his phobia of flickering lights, and flops into a chair with enough force to send it rolling, slowly, until it bumps into the one Tony's sitting in, jarring him and messing up the line he's trying to draw on an old schematic, adapting an old idea into something that might actually work.

"You see that?" Clint says, when he looks up to scowl at the interruption, and nods at the elevators, then walks two fingers along the edge of the desk. 

"Yes. Congratulations on figuring out stairs," Tony says and gives him his best mock-impressed look. "I guess my ramp lack won't serve as an effective Hawkeye barrier after all." Clint grins and slouches and it's only a little bit obvious that he's doing it out of exhaustion, resting his weight heavily as he leans and propping his bad--his worse--arm up. 

"If you can't move that later tonight, Bruce and Cap are going to be pret- _ty_ upset with you."

"Yeah, yeah," Clint says, and "They can just learn to deal with it. The sitting still is making me crazier than the working out or the tripping over your stupid carpets or the I don't know what."

"Yeah, they sound really unreasonable," Tony says, because nothing says _don't need help_ quite like 'can't navigate carpets'. Clint gives him a dark look, and Tony smirks at him because a lot of the drunken wobble is gone now, but there's still the barest hint of unsteadiness in there. "So," he says, "I'm working here," and jerks his head at the parts strewn across his tables. 

"Yeah," Clint says, "So work."

The man takes to hints like a cat to water. " _Working_ ," Tony repeats meaningfully, and holds up his torch. Pulls the trigger to make it snap light, just the once, in case Clint's being denser than usual.

"Sure," Clint huffs, "Don't let me stop you."

Tony sighs and scrubs his face and says, "Now you're just trying to get me into trouble, Barton. JARVIS? I want you to note that I'm continuing only under duress." 

JARVIS responds with a polite, "Noted, sir," and Clint waves his hand in a go-ahead gesture. 

"This is not a healthy way to deal with this," Tony tells him, but tosses Clint a pair of safety goggles.

\-----

The sparking isn't that bad, and Tony tries to keep the torch steadier than usual, avoiding a lot of flashing and flickering and shielding it when he can manage to do it surreptitiously, but Clint twitches anyway. 

Just now and then. He's got a grip on it, it looks like. At least for the most part. 

"I don't know why you're doing this, you stubborn bastard," Tony says, after a while, finally putting down the torch when it starts to look like Clint hasn't so much got a handle on things, but has figured out how to hyperventilate secretly. "Unless it's because you want Steve to kill me when, once again, I am at the eye of storm Barton."

"I'm okay," Clint insists, even though he looks a little seasick. 

"Uh huh. You _look_ great," Tony tells him, and Clint snorts then rips the goggles off and flings them across the lab. 

Spits, "Fuck," with quiet vehemence, then almost drops his face into his hand but catches himself. 

"Hey," Tony says, "You're not on anything anymore, right? Let's take a break. Have a drink and toast to translating our issues into rage. And don't worry. I won't invite Bruce."

"I'm not--" Clint starts, and then his eyes follow the trajectory his goggles had taken and he says, "Yeah, alright."

\-----

Bruce tidies up the kitchen. It's a damn disaster area, with the way they've been distracted or using the distraction to let things slide, skip their turn, or whatever other lapses of discipline happen when those members of the team who care about housing conditions are as upset as the ones who don't. 

Clint, Bruce thinks, has racked up a ton of kitchen duty debt, even from before the _situation_ \--and Bruce is just waiting for a good minute to tease him about getting out of it. One day when Clint isn't crawling out of his skin it might even be funny, but that might be some ways off still.

Clint's still remembering odd things at odd times, and it feels wrong to know why he jerks upright when Natasha jokingly tweaks at the scruff on his face, or why he turns lights on all over the tower, leaving a trail of lit halls and rooms in his wake when he wanders around at night, for JARVIS to shut down if he doesn't return to them. 

It's still improvement, Bruce has to remind himself. He can still remember how they'd found Clint--can't _forget_ how they'd found Clint--and recall when "not dead" was a heartening thing. When Clint's not _right there_ being short tempered and crabbing, 'not dead' is _still_ a heartening thing.

But it doesn't look like they're going to lose Clint to psychological damage, either, and the realization that he's slowly rallying is enough to comfort Bruce to the point that he can process the state of the kitchen and living areas. It feels like he's involved in some kind of strange relay race, handing Clint off to the others now that what he needs is distraction and some kind of low-key, unobtrusive supervision to keep him from overdoing in the gym. 

The next time Thor has to pry Clint out from a small space he's jammed himself into--and _that_ makes Bruce think of the open space of the warehouse and the lack of findable shelter--Bruce hears Natasha saying, "We've got you, Clint," from behind Thor and outside striking range, and can't bring himself to look at her in case her face looks like his does when he reminds himself, _we got him back alive._

"It'll be fine," Tony says, to both of them, when the situation passes and Clint's left to splash water on his face and scrap his dignity back together, slamming the bathroom door emphatically behind him. "You have no idea how long it took me to get back in the water after Afghanistan, and now? Prince of the pool."

Natasha snorts. Says, "Sorry, Stark. I think that's _Steve_ ," but Bruce thinks that he's right, mostly. This is, now, a matter of time, but he doesn't think it'll be 'fine'. Bruce isn't Tony. He doesn't really believe there's a _fine_ after this sort of thing. But there is an okay and a functionally coping, and in all probability, Clint's going to get there.

Slowly, but that's really the only speed there is for it.

\-----

The thing with Natasha and SHIELD is weird. Clint can't figure out exactly where to start unraveling it, because they've both been on hush-hush ops before, of the deny-your-existence variety. The grudge she has just sits wrong.

"Something's up," he tells Steve, taking slow, measured, but ridiculously satisfying shots. Even the pull in his shoulder and back is a welcome thing. He doesn't mention it because Steve's been acting like Bruce's right hand in the training room, calling time-outs and breaks at obnoxiously frequent intervals. Pretending they're for his own sake, which is either patronizing as fuck or kind of endearing.

Clint can't quite make up his mind about it.

"You know that I know that there's no way in hell that you need that many breaks," he says, and Steve pauses guiltily, then shrugs. Clint _could_ say that the breaks are just giving his shoulder a chance to cool down and stiffen up all over again, but Steve would probably take that as a cue to eject him from the gym and tell him to not strain himself. 

"So," Clint says, erring on the side of playing along with Steve and loosing one last arrow before calling it a day. "You guys gonna fill me in? Because Tony and Thor? Are turning into _freaks_."

"Clint, they were really wor--"

" _Freaks_ ," Clint repeats, and stops to consider how his shot's come out before collapsing his bow down.

\-----

"So, to cut to the chase," Tony says, and flicks the corner of his laptop with a finger, but doesn't turn it on. The whole thing feels wrong, now that Clint's mostly up and about. It feels like a secret meeting, rather than necessary coordination and no wonder Clint's picking up on whatever it is he's interpreting their unease as. "We can destroy it, but--I want to point out--we didn't do anything _wrong_."

Of course they hadn't. But the fact that the video exists at all fills Steve with a sick guilt. As if seeing Clint like _that_ was as much of a violation as what had been done to him. Maybe more. Clint's too stubborn and proud to want them to have seen him breaking and broken. Wouldn't want them to have watched the whole thing, or even the portions they'd divided watch duty into. 

_Steve_ wouldn't want Tony or Bruce or Natasha to have watched _him_ being tortured. To have watched him _go along_ with demeaning commands, to catch a break. But _keeping_ the video from Clint is just making the whole thing seem like a dirty secret, and yeah. Throwing them all off.

"Just tell him," Bruce says, before Steve can, "We found him, and I don't really care how we did. I don't think Clint will, either."

Steve lets his breath out. "I hate to put this on him," he says, "He's finally--"

"Acting kind of normal?" Tony asks, and smirks a little, but without humor. "Don't worry. Me and Thor will show him, and Thor can give him Asgardian hugs." Then, "It'll be fine Steve."

\-----

It is, mostly. Clint watches about three minutes of the footage before closing the laptop--without bothering to shut it off--then sits in Tony's lab chair looking down at the thing's lid with an almost blank look, his fingers playing over the Stark Industries logo stamped into it.

"So," he says, after a long while, "maybe for a different movie night?"

"We had to find you," Natasha says, in a tone that has no apology in it at all. She's giving him an explanation, but she clearly doesn't think of it as an excuse. She probably doesn't think they need one. "And you _bet_ we watched every second until we got a location lock."

"They didn't want anything," Clint says, "If they'd asked anything, I might have--" It's an admission. The guilt in it makes Tony want to hit him.

"You didn't die," Natasha says, "And you're sane." And yeah, Tony remembers being afraid that he might not be by the time they got to him, a few times. "And this won't happen again."

"Why? Because you won't make up with Fury? Nat--"

"Because you're Avengers," Tony says, meaning the both of them, "and that means no more SHIELD borrowing if they're not going to borrow responsibly. _We_ deserve to know when they lose one of us. It was--" he glances at the laptop, "fucked up."

Clint looks like he's gearing up to protest, but then his finger taps the laptop lid a few times and he says, "Yeah."

There's no I-am-an-agent-of-SHIELD bravado, which probably means that the three minutes of video has taken him back, maybe even to a place where he's likely to forget where he is, or go back to doing that quiet, far-away thing that's less frequent now, but not entirely gone. Tony gives him a quick Thor-pat, just in case, then grins when Clint spins the chair enough to slide out from under his hand and shoot him a mock-affronted look.

"I'm _fine_ , Tony," he says, but without heat or venom. His eyes go to the computer, then across the lab to the door of the medical room and then he touches his neck--not hiding the gesture at all--and lets his breath out. 

"Don't worry," he says, "I'm not about to freak out and throw things at you again."

It takes Tony a second to figure out that he's talking about giving him a bloody nose in the med room. It feels like a long, long time ago. "My shoe," he says, "It was my shoe. And you missed."

"Please," Clint snorts, spinning the chair the rest of the way around to face him, "I don't miss."

"You missed," Tony says, "You got me with your freaking elbow." Or it might have been a foot. It's not important.

"Oh. Well, I got you with something, at least," Clint says, and gets up. Right into Natasha's catch. It's Thor-hugs all around, then.

Natasha says something in Russian, and Tony's not sure if Clint even _understands_ Russian, but he says, "Yeah," and, with a last look back at the laptop, "Thanks for getting me." 

Natasha's response to that is _aggressive_ Russian. Of the don't-be-an-idiot variety, probably, and Clint grins over her shoulder before pushing her back. Gently, like he thinks Nat's the one with lingering concussion symptoms and a tendency to freak out. 

"Okay if we destroy the video?" she asks, and for a weird second it looks like Clint's actually torn about it. 

Then he says, "Yeah. If no one needs it for anything, yeah."

"Oh," Nat says, slow and with a smile Tony doesn't want to ever be on the wrong side of, "Nobody needs it. We took care of that."

"Right," Clint says, "Good." 

\-----

Tony's taken to signing the entire alphabet song at him, and snatches of the most obnoxious pop he can find. Clint's sure he's gone out of his way to find the most grating lyrics possible--ones that are even more annoying once they're divorced from their music and vocals--and he's about two seconds away from breaking Tony's fingers, but Tony has the unfair advantage of having a light shining out of the middle of his chest. It's fucking blinding today, so Clint settles for narrowing his eyes in pointed threat and Tony--un-Tony-ishly--backs off.

"You alright?"

"I'm fine," Clint growls, then follows it with, " _Really_." The staring into light isn't good. Not in the same way as before, when his brain interpreted every flicker across his face as incoming threat, but it's hurting his eyes, and--by extension--hurting his head, kicking up a dull throb. 

"You're not going to be able to fix me, you know," he says, looking away when Tony quits flapping at him, and blinking until the arc reactor blue fades from his vision, "I'm not an Iron Man suit."

"I'm not--" Tony stops, and Tony at a loss for words is amusing enough that Clint smirks and glances back at him. "That's not what I'm doing," he says finally.

"Yeah?" Clint considers letting it go, and leans across the kitchen counter, stretching his arms out. He can't quite hook the far side, but the pull in his shoulder is just a burn and not the grinding stiffness it had been. "Then what's with all the toys?" he asks, and points into his ear, indicating Tony's fancy shmantzy hearing aids.

Tony makes a face. "Maybe it's my hobby," he says, with a shrug, "I make toys for everybody. I made toys for Nat, for Bruce, for--okay. Maybe not for _Thor_ , but you know. I would if he wasn't going around just magicking everything in his obnoxiously tech-obsoleting way."

"And the sign language?" Clint interrupts. "I thought it was for--I don't know. Distraction or something. But I'm good now and you're still," Clint mimes signing, making vague, meaningless gestures with one hand, then shrugs. Talking to Tony when he was in his right mind could be awkward, somehow. More so now that he'd had conversations with Tony where it had been easy, but where he'd also been a ranting, babbling wreck.

Tony lets his breath out in a puff and looks something between pained and offended. "Well, don't think I'm _making_ you, Barton," he says, and Clint frowns and stretches a bit further, making another try to catch his fingers under the far edge. This time it does send a twinge through his shoulder and down his side, but he stretches it out instead of letting go. 

"Of course you're not _making_ me," Clint snorts, and has to remember not to roll his eyes while his head is doing its impending carsickness thing.

"Well I'm not _peer pressuring_ you either then, tough guy," Tony says, and he _does_ roll his eyes. Clint grins. 

"Don't try to change the subject. I've been fine all this time. Without the--" He gestures again, letting one hand go of the counter edge to flip sloppily through random signs, before catching it again. Tony gives him the look he gives Bruce sometimes, when he's waiting for him to catch up with his latest 'obvious' deduction--patiently patronizing like he's waiting for a particularly stupid kid to finish a math problem. 

Clint doesn't even bother trying to get onto the same track. Just gives Tony the same look back, keeping it as level as the need to squint will allow him until Tony puffs in exasperation and drops both hands onto the counter with a single thump, then leans over him.

"Fine all this time?" Tony says, eventually. He sounds pissed. "You think--Sorry, Barton, I know this shit's been tough on you but it hasn't been--" he stops when Clint gives him a nonplussed look and his mouth twitches into a tight, not-quite-purse lipped expression before he lets his breath out and takes another. "It wasn't _fine_ , you asshole. We--Do you know what any one of us would have given to be able to tell you it was us?" 

Tony's doing his intense-Stark thing, his eyes dark and serious, his face tense enough that a muscle is jumping by his ear. Clint's reflex is to make a joke, to defuse the extended, intent eye-contact. Call Tony on his crazy-eyes, or something, but he can't quite make himself do it. 

What comes out of his mouth is, "Oh."

Tony grabs his hand by the wrist and turns it palm up, then signs into it, _It's us, Clint_.

"Oh," Clint says again, and then, because the silence is awkward, "I figured it out."

"Next time," Tony says, "you won't have to."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Banner for harcourt's Fractures Emanating](https://archiveofourown.org/works/954167) by [Neffie (originalneffie)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/originalneffie/pseuds/Neffie)




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